Logical Fallacy
by BC
Summary: A fatal combination of youthful folly and an awakening conscience lead Bill Weasley back to the front steps of No. 4 Privet Drive – to abduct a little kid.
1. Book 1: Deduction

A/N: This story has been mostly written for months and sitting around waiting for a couple of finishing touches. I've had a mostly free Saturday, so it's complete now and I will be uploading a chapter once a week on average.

Those impatiently awaiting updates of my other stories: don't worry! Neither _Visionary_ nor _Nothing like Harker_ have been forgotten. I just had to unload a bit of stress during the exam time (in May), so I came up with this. I was supposed to be my late birthday present to myself. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I didn't intend this when I started. I thought it would have been nice if Harry had grown up with Bill in Egypt, right? Well… wrong.

Anyhow, **warnings**: completely AU and mostly OOC, very dark, violence, abuse, mentions of het, implied slash, very much not nice Bill and Harry, recreational Molly-bashing (I don't like Molly Weasley – can you tell?), character death, no happy end. Read at your own peril.

Inspiration acknowledgement goes to Elizabeth Knox and her creepily amazing _Black Oxen_.

Logical Fallacy

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Book One: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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Chapter One: Deduction

x

"I dare you…" Silvia Fawcett paused and looked around the haphazard convention of mostly Gryffindor seventh-years. The glass in her hand teetered and Firewhisky sloshed onto her shirt. Her eyes fell on Timothy Masen draped over an armchair in a fashion that lay doubt to his consciousness. His eyes were open, but his cheek was pressed into a pool of his drool. "Timmy!" Silvia exclaimed, excited. "I dare you to wear my clothes to breakfast tomorrow!"

Impressed by the cleverness and hilarity of the rather unimaginative dare, the drunken company jeered and giggled. Timothy roused himself to half-way coherent state (which, in fact, _was_ impressive, considering how much he had consumed when he had realised that against all odds he had graduated successfully) and blearily stared around himself.

"I bet he's got no idea what just happened," Adrian muttered near enough to Bill's ear to be heard. Bill didn't accept the bet, because it was rather obvious that Timothy was off with pixies in a land where bottles of whisky grew on trees, or perhaps bushes.

"I think Silvia could have him dress in her clothes right here, right now, in front of everybody. He wouldn't notice," Bill replied.

Adrian hummed. "_I_ wouldn't mind seeing her in the buff," he said lecherously.

Bill laughed it off. As opposed to Adrian, he had seen several girls naked. While nice, he preferred to watch in private.

"I…" Timothy slurred, absently wiping spit from his cheek. "I'll do it 'course…"

Bill sighed. He sincerely doubted Tim was going to be able to go anywhere by breakfast. He would hardly be in the state to crawl out of bed… or armchair…

"I dare…" Timothy swayed, squinting in the absence of his glasses. It was possible that he couldn't recall a single of his classmates' names, so he searched for an impulse to spark the memory somewhere among the blurred faces of his audience. He stopped on the vivid red of Bill's hair, and Bill suddenly felt as though someone had stepped on his grave. "B-bill…to…"

Silence reigned and Adrian pulled away as if Bill was revealed to have a contagious illness. Grave eyes gazed at Bill from all sides as his so-called 'friends' expected his humiliation with bated breath.

In that very instance, William Weasley became aware that taking part in an Oath-bound game of 'Do you dare?' was one of the stupidest things he had done in his life.

"…to…"

He tried to convince himself it would just be something disgusting, something that had crept out of the alcohol–saturated recess of a diseased mind. Or something naked. Or, if Timothy was unexpectedly struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration, perhaps he would dare Bill to kiss a teacher or something, though hopefully not Sn-

"…to… I know!" Tim, in his excitement, slumped, and Bill had a second of hope that he was out, but then he opened his eyes and hollered: "I dare you to find Harry Potter!"

x

Bill ghosted up the Burrow's stairs, eluding his mother, who was in the kitchen teaching Ginny some housewifely knowledge, successfully reached his room and, once safe inside, let out a resounding sigh of relief. He was having one hell of a day…

He let his bag fall onto the floor with a hearty crunch of crumpled leather and parchment, cast off his robe and flopped down onto his bed. The day was sweltering – though it had not seemed so in the basement of Gringotts, where he had spent the past five hours. He was, nevertheless, glad to be out of there. Goblins in large numbers still made him nervous; he liked their attitude, but they were unpredictable and therefore slightly frightening-

"Bill?"

He glared at the door and, consequently, at Percy, who stuck his head inside without the basic courtesy of knocking. It was just like Hogwarts, except that instead of annoying year-mates his privacy was being invaded by obnoxious younger siblings.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"How did it go?" Percy inquired eagerly. What bloody business of his was it? If Bill wanted to tell him, he would have done so already.

"Fine," Bill grumbled, glaring in the vain hope that Percy would get the hint and piss off. No such luck. Percy grinned and stepped inside the room as if he couldn't see Bill's scowl and couldn't hear the grinding of his teeth.

"What do you want?" Bill practically barked at the kid. He had no patience with little brothers who made it their mission to vex him until he blew up and hurt them. That was why the entire family was in Gryffindor: Bill knew how to inflict pain without leaving marks (his mother thought him the perfect angel, as opposed to Fred and George, who were dubbed notorious liars, and Percy, who had gained the reputation of a wuss) and still his brothers provoked him. The only one with enough brain to leave well enough alone was Charlie…

"You touch that, brat, and I make sure you can't sit down for dinner," Bill hissed when Percy reached out to touch his bag.

"I just want to know if you-"

"I don't care." Bill got up from the bed and practically towered over his kid-brother. Percy pouted. Bill picked him up by the scruff of his neck and chucked him out into the corridor. He slammed the door shut (it had been silenced by his accidental magic since before he had started at Hogwarts) and hexed the handle.

With a quiet curse, he went to throw himself onto the bed again. The goblins didn't care a whit that he had a puny student's body – they wanted him to have the strength, speed and dexterity of a Special Ops Auror! He had survived, of course, but everything hurt and it was only going to get worse in the next two days. He was tempted to make a trip to Diagon a buy a muscle-relaxant or something, but his funds were short and he needed to save as much as he could. Ergo – no comfort for him.

Still, it wasn't like he wasn't used to it.

He seriously contemplated just nodding off – the day was already dead, but his mother was liable to kill him yet more literally if he didn't crawl out and inform her that he was home… A knock on the door brought him back to full awareness and he forbade himself to resent it, because he would be going against himself if he did.

"Yeah?" he grumbled.

"Can I come in?" Charlie's voice sniped right back and Bill snickered. Charlie was his safety: the moment Charlie would stop understanding him, he would know he was too far gone. Everybody else was ignorable, but Charlie had to be noticed.

"Do," Bill bade him. A yelp from outside reminded him that he had hexed the handle… well, never mind. Charlie lumbered in, scowling. He was rubbing his hand and giving Bill a Snape-worthy glare, but Bill had learnt to ignore that kind of glares when he was twelve.

"Bastard," Charlie mumbled, seating himself on the edge of the bed, _accidentally_ aiming an elbow to Bill's bare side.

Bill dodged and groaned in pain. "You know you're insulting your own parents when you call me that?"

"You're insulting them when you act like that. Makes it seem like they didn't teach you any manners-"

"They should teach the little brats to keep their noses out of other people's business," Bill grumbled. Charlie paused in the rubbing and looked at his palm. There was a red welt there – a legacy of a nasty but generally harmless hex – and Bill sighed and cast a mild Healing Charm. Charlie sneered at Bill's wand in envy, but it wasn't like Bill hadn't had to wait for seventeen years before he could use it – let everyone else wait that long, too. That was plain and simple justice.

"So, what was Perce wailing about this time?" Charlie asked, keeping his mouth shut about his jealousy and about Bill's temper. Apparently, Bill wouldn't have to get up to inform the rest of the family about his arrival – Percival had handled it for him with the grace of a wussy twelve-year-old girl.

"Kicked him out of my room. Not even literally," Bill dismissed the occurrence. Their mother wouldn't believe the tale anyway, and he was rid of the kid for another couple of hours. Not a bad result. "Dammit, I hate little kids…" he muttered.

"You're sure you're a Weasley?" Charlie asked, laughing. "I thought we're genetically predisposed to want a houseful of sprogs-"

"Maybe I _am_ a bastard," Bill replied with a shrug. He didn't particularly care. He very much doubted he had been conceived out of wedlock – he had too many physical similarities with his father – but he honestly didn't give a damn.

Charlie didn't have a response to that. Instead, he switched to the topic that was the primary reason of his visit. "Did the goblins send you packing?"

Bill growled. It was his damnable pride (he privately believed it was inherited from his mother's mother who was born a Rosier and allegedly as snobbish as an arguably Light witch could get) that remained vulnerable to verbal attacks. Fortunately there were probably two people in the world who realised that, so he wasn't harassed too often. It helped that he didn't take shit from anyone. Even the Slytherins gave him a wide berth after he had cursed Jorkins with an obscure spell not even Pomfrey could identify and break.

"No," he said eventually. He had wanted to keep it silent, but, dammit, he wasn't going to let Charlie mock him! He _was_ the best in the year, and the goblins could have fallen over themselves to draft a contract. "I'm stationed in Egypt, starting the first of August."

"Awesome!" Charlie exclaimed. He was being mostly sincere but, like always, a little jealous. He was mostly content to remain in Bill's shadow, but he was also the only one who realised the true extent of Bill's awesomeness – and he carried that with a little less grace that would have been prudent.

"Tell that to mother," Bill scoffed. "I'm thinking I'll just go and leave her a letter explaining where I've gone. I really don't want to deal with all the shrieking."

"So you'll leave us to deal with it," Charlie deadpanned.

Bill shrugged. He didn't claim he was a nice person.

"Bastard."

x

"William Septimus Weasley!" his mother shrieked. Bill jolted from the bed and, reflexively, cast a Colloportus on his door. A moment later his brain woke up enough to realise what was going on, and he added a couple more charms reinforcing the exit.

He pulled on the robe he had thrown over the back on his chair yesterday, grabbed his shoes and bag, transfigured a part of the wall into a door, jumped through, and reversed the transfiguration.

Charlie glared at him blearily. "What did you do now?"

"At a guess, she read _my bloody_ mail. Two more weeks and, thank Merlin, I'm out of this madhouse!"

"You're antisocial, brother," Charlie informed him ever so graciously, with his face buried in the pillow. "First step is to admit you've got a problem-"

"I've got a problem. My mother is a sodding banshee."

Charlie's shoulders shook, but it wasn't clear whether he was laughing or crying over Bill's impossibility. He pulled his blanket over his head. Bill tilted the chair by the desk until all Charlie's dirty clothes fell in the floor, and then sat down.

"You're not going away?" Charlie inquired, making it strikingly obvious he wished it were so.

"I don't want to." Bill hated how his voice sounded weak when he said it, and how he shivered. He despised his own stupidity – one, one bloody time in his bloody life he did something stupid, and landed himself in this pile of crap. He mentally swore vendetta on Timothy Braindead Mason, who had to come up with the one thing that would put Bill and his future into jeopardy.

"But you've got to?" Charlie was frowning at him, sitting up on the bed. His hair was rumpled, and Bill briefly wondered in what state his own was, but he had bigger things to worry about.

"Got to do the dare," he replied.

Charlie suddenly became very loud: "Why would you-"

"Shut up!" Bill hissed. "The game was spell-protected! We were all oath-bound-"

"Why in the name of Merlin did you do something so stupid?!"

Bill opened his mouth to reply – something heated and riddled with profanity – but Charlie found his own answer faster.

"Your idiotic pride, right…" Charlie shook his head in exasperation. "You only have to see him, right? Just make sure that he's there and that's it?"

Bill nodded.

"It could have been worse."

Bill would protest, but he was all too aware that he was lucky Mason couldn't remember polysyllabic words when he said the dare. _Finding_ the Boy Saviour was, clearly, the lesser evil, considering how many other verbs Mason could have thought of in that instant.

"Good luck," Charlie told him simply, and ostentatiously lay down and pulled his cover over his head again. Bill didn't feel like talking, anyway, so he just shrugged and Apparated away before his mother located him and laid into him – or tried to forbid him to go to Egypt. Like he would listen.

x

"You're kidding me…" Bill muttered, staring at the house in front of himself. It was – he glanced at his wrist – half past six, and he had, after almost twelve hours of reconnaissance and travelling, located the fabled 'Privet Drive'.

The place gave him creeps. It was like someone cast a replicating spell on one building and continued to do so until he filled the entire area. There were cars. He wouldn't say so aloud, but he had been briefly thankful for his father's embarrassing obsession with muggles, because otherwise he would have been likely dead – run over by one of those lethal contraptions. They were… well, ingenious, yes. They were. Considering that they apparently had not a smidgen of magic in them…

Anyway, a town with as little individuality as this made him afraid that the creature that captured and brainwashed the citizens would capture and brainwash him, too. Orientation was possible only by house numbers, and he found '4' swiftly. There was a big red car in the driveway, a couple of stairs up to a white door and shouting coming from the inside.

He grimaced; he had escaped one shrieking harpy in the morning only to find another by the nightfall. He couldn't hear a response, until about a minute later a man began to shout… but not at the woman.

Bill scoffed at the folly. Whichever self-righteous meddling self-important… headmaster put the Boy Who Lived with a dysfunctional family of muggles? Wizards and witches would have duelled for the privilege of raising the boy. Bill didn't like his own family much, but they at least weren't violent and they – admittedly – cared about each other.

He wouldn't have to be here for too long. Just catch a glimpse of Potter, and be on his way…

He Disillusioned himself and walked up to the window. There was a sitting room behind it, lit by a rectangle of light coming from the hall. He would have to go in, then…

He lifted his wand and was about to cast 'Alohomora' on the white front door, when he noticed the hum. It was faint – in the loud muggle town, only those who knew what to look for would even notice it, not to mention recognise. Wards. Of course. Even a headmaster wouldn't leave Harry Potter without wards.

Dammit!

x

Thoroughly chastised, Bill dragged himself out of the Burrow. His mother followed him down the stairs, but she could not match his agility and he was out of the front door before she evaded Fred and George who, _accidentally_, ended up in her path.

"William!" his mother yelled.

"I've got a meeting, mum!" he yelled back, and Apparated.

He ended up in a park near the Privet Drive – an ugly place with a couple of swings, metal cage-like constructions with peeling paint and a dirty sand-box. He carefully watched where he was stepping, because the muggles that owned dogs around here didn't possess basic politeness.

"Young man!" an older lady surrounded by cats addressed him.

Bill did his utmost best to keep his face expressionless and turned to her, replying in an even voice: "Yes, ma'am?"

"This is muggle neighbourhood," she informed him, as if that wasn't obvious from the pathological uniformity. "That-" she pointed a gnarled finger at his robe, "-is not inconspicuous. Go get changed before I call Aurors on you for a breach of the Act, yea?"

Bill blinked. His attire was the last thing he had worried about, but he probably should have. In hindsight, it sounded quite like something he should be ashamed of overlooking-

"Thank you for the warning, ma'am," he said. He glanced around – there were a few people in sight – and cast a slow transfiguration. There was no immediate apparent change, but his robe gradually draped itself tighter around his torso and shrunk into a shirt. No one noticed.

"Nice piece of magic," the old lady nodded, while one of her cats (a little fluffy ginger monster) rubbed itself against his shoes. He gritted his teeth and rigidly held himself straight, trying to defy the urge to kick it. "Now, what is a young wizard like you doing in town like this?" she inquired curiously.

"I'm on a dare," Bill replied, biting his tongue before he quite rudely demanded that she tell him who she was.

She narrowed his eyes at him, and Bill decided then and there that he didn't want her to know. Moving faster than even the cats could react, he cast an 'Obliviate', and ran off across the park, with three enraged animals on his heels. He crossed the copse of trees and came out on the other side. There were more identical houses there. Bill turned right and at the next crossroad doubled back.

He came to Number Four Privet Drive ten minutes later, from the other side. A boy was yelling from the kitchen, demanding more food, and a woman replied in a high-pitched voice that carried, though her words weren't discernible. The ward hummed, even less noticeable in daylight than it had been in the dusk yesterday.

"Ouch…" someone said quietly.

Bill spun. There was a freshly-painted fence – bright white like the door – and behind it rosebushes in bloom. He came closer, as close as the ward allowed him.

There was a boy kneeling in the dry dirt, digging – no, _spudding_ – with a tiny spade. He had messy black hair and wore a t-shirt that would have fit Bill better than it fitted him (even Bill's siblings had never worn clothes in such a loathsome state, not even for yard-work). Though Bill had never seen a picture of him, he was almost certain this was Harry Potter.

Fine. He had seen him. He could go now-

Potter sat back on his haunches and looked up, pushing a pair of round spectacles higher on his nose.

Bill froze – the boy had a bruise covering a third of his face. He had only seen such bruises after nasty Quidditch accidents, but here – in this pinnacle of muggleness – Potter couldn't have been playing Quidditch, not to speak about the fact that he was seven and therefore unlikely to be allowed a broom.

A pair of confused green eyes met his, and Potter flinched, hunching his shoulders. He swiftly returned to work, as if afraid that Bill would blab that he had taken ten seconds of rest.

"Who did that to you?" Bill asked.

Potter flinched again, but didn't look up. He kept on digging. Taught not to talk to strangers, naturally.

"I'm Bill," Bill said. "You're Harry, right?"

The boy didn't react. Bill was almost worried that he was deaf, but when the woman with the shrill voice shouted something from the house, Potter looked up and yelled: "Yes, Aunt Petunia!" in a high, childish voice. He reminded Bill of his brothers, but at the same time not.

Potter got up, washed his hands with the hose, and went into the house, successfully disregarding Bill's presence. It was nearly as offending as it was intriguing.


	2. Book 1: Induction

A/N: Thanks for all the kind encouragement! For your enjoyment, I bring you the second chapter. Enjoy!  
Brynn

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Book One: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

x

Chapter Two: Induction

x

"Bill is Mr Grumpy," Ronald said to Charlie, and Charlie hid his snicker behind his hand. Percival scowled at them and burrowed deeper into his armchair. He raised his book so that he wouldn't have to look at anyone – and anyone wouldn't have to look at him. Bill didn't mind in the least.

"And you are a little vexing gnome, but you don't hear me badmouthing you," Bill snarled at the kid, realising only belatedly that he was, in fact, confirming Ronald's statement.

Ronald stared at him curiously; it seemed he didn't understand what Bill had accused him of. Bill rolled his eyes, got up and stalked out of the house towards the pond. From distance he saw little Diggory and his pals swimming around and hastily changed the direction. He was fed up with children, having five siblings in the fifteen-year-long irritating phase.

"He's right, you know," Charlie said, catching up to him, and slowed down from jog to spry step, matching Bill's pace. "You've been in a right foul mood the past few days." Charlie paused and gave him a shrewd look. "Since you've seen Harry Potter."

Bill halted rapidly, and Charlie passed him by. He turned around and his shrewdness morphed into exasperation.

"For Merlin's sake, Bill, what's with you? Or what's with the kid?"

Bill sighed and sat down into the grass. When he remained like that for long enough, glaring at the horizon above the Pennines, Charlie sank down next to him, breaking ferns. A minute or two later, Charlie risked touching his arm.

Bill bit the inside of his cheek.

"Something happened, right?"

Bill shrugged. "I Obliviated a hag – a squib, I guess, but she might have been a witch."

"Harry's guard, you think?" Charlie asked practically.

Bill shrugged again. It kind of made sense that Dumbledore would have stationed someone there to keep an eye on the kid. It had to be someone half-blind and mentally retarded to not notice the amount of hostility Potter was treated with.

"Think they'll find out?"

"No," Bill said with calm certainty. "If they were going to, they would have by now." Even if someone had noticed the spell, it was probably ascribed to accidental magic of the only known wizard in the area.

"Then what's the problem?"

Should he tell? He could get himself into trouble, or alternatively he would give Charlie something pretty ugly to worry about – if even he, the resident cold fish, was being troubled to the degree that his eight-year-old brother noticed.

"Tell me, dammit!" Charlie demanded. "I thought you trusted me!"

"You want to know?!" Bill snarled, angry at the accusation. "Well, if you want it that much, I'll tell you! Potter's family is a bunch of bigoted prigs!"

Charlie blinked. "And that's a problem why?"

"Because it's obvious they don't like the kid one bit." He squared his shoulder and waited for the implications to hit. They did. Charlie went a little pale, and fell into silence that stretched and stretched…

They sat there on the slope, each lost deep in his thoughts. Bill contemplated the ramifications. He mused on what Potter would grow up as, how much the muggles would mess him up, if he would be likely to go into Slytherin and decide to get back at the muggles – or maybe at all muggles – one day. It wasn't a nice vision.

He should tell someone. He should, but if the old woman with cats knew who Potter was – and she couldn't have not known – she would have told. That meant the Ministry didn't bother to do anything about it. Dumbledore was the one that had spirited Potter away in the first place, and for whatever reason Dumbledore didn't do anything either.

"Who can I tell?" Bill asked. "Everyone who can do anything knows."

Charlie looked up, and there was hardness in his eyes that Bill recognised from the mirror. "Does Egypt have extradition treaties with Britain?"

x

"This will make me a criminal."

Charlie scoffed. "You already are a criminal. This will make you a _good man_."

Bill flipped his brother off and raised his head from the desk. He was scared. He wasn't too good a Gryffindor – never had been – and he rarely did something he was scared of doing. He either rushed into things before he had had a chance to become afraid, or found a good, rational reason why not to do it at all. This situation was unprecedented: never before had he been faced with a moral conundrum of this magnitude.

"Good man…" Bill said contemptuously. "Whatever motivation do I have to strive for that?"

"To get people to like you?"

"People like rich, powerful and beautiful people – for as long as they are useful to them."

Charlie looked to heaven as if begging for patience. He was ever an optimist and, incomprehensively to Bill, it wasn't due to ignorance. Charlie just suffered a terminal case of belief in the good of the world. "Harry Potter will like you," he said, going from shaky to totally ridiculous argumentation.

"The goal of my life – to get a brat to 'like me'."

Charlie grinned at him and started talking about the things a little boy would need.

x

"This is officially the craziest thing I've ever done," Bill whispered to himself for the thirteenth time. He strode down the underground hallway – it was more like an illuminated catacomb – and glared at the cuneiform-inscribed doors on both sides. Written Gobbledegook was just one of the thousand malicious pranks goblins installed to hinder their human employees.

Bill had the advantage of knowing way more about Runes than he was supposed to, but even so he went mostly on visual memory here. He knew what 'Rotharck' looked like in cuneiform, and he compared that in his mind to the plaques as he passed them.

He, in fact, was inclined to doubt that the goblins really worked here most of their time. It was drearier than Hogwarts' dungeons; there was nothing but smoking torches in torch-holders leaving smoke-blackened shapes on the rough rock of the walls and a hard, monochromatic grey of muggle concrete making the floor flat. He hated this place, but, as they said, need's must.

"Finally…" he snarled, coming to a halt in front of an entrance that looked exactly like the couple hundred of others he had passed along his way. He used the generic knocker to make his presence known and waited, mentally going one last time over the story he had prepared.

A creature that reached to his waist, but more than made up for it in muscle mass, armour, weaponry and sheer ferocity of expression glared up at him.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

"Weasley – recently accepted as curse-breaker apprentice, starting in August," Bill said with corresponding shortness.

The goblin huffed, expelling a cloud of stink and droplets of saliva. He turned around in the doorway, hitting both sides of the doorframe in the process and scuffing the already scuffed spaulders. He went back inside and Bill (who was well aware of the genetic taciturnity of these creatures and didn't let it bother him) followed.

"Fusty, deal with it!" the goblin snarled – it seemed like his natural way of using English was snarling it – and disappeared somewhere in the spidery innards of the gigantic Gringotts basement.

A harassed-looking young witch climbed out of a mountain of paperwork and resignedly gazed at Bill through thick glasses that made her look like a fly. She had three fingers on her left hand stuck on various pages of a law-book so that she wouldn't lose them, and a dripping quill clenched in her right fist.

"I'm Fiona McFusty, what can I do for you?" she said in a monotone that made Bill briefly doubt her authenticity as a human being.

"I'm going to Egypt for an apprenticeship on the 31st, Miss," he replied, not nearly as tonelessly, but doing his best. She didn't seem to notice he was mocking her, probably stuck with her head in the laws. "I'd like to know if it would be possible to take a minor with me."

She let her hand with the book fall (the quill continued dripping on her shoes, already stained with ink and wax) and closed her eyes, thinking deep. "Of course it is possible, Mr Weasley. May I know what relation to you is the minor?"

Bill's voice hardened; it usually did when he was lying, simply to intimidate his conversation partner to the point when they would not have leftover mental capacity to ponder the veracity of his words. "It has recently come to my attention that the boy's mother's family is incapable of providing for him satisfactorily. I would not see him suffer; therefore I intend to take him with me."

McFusty flushed, clever enough to make out what he was alluding to without needing a time to analyse his speech. She measured him from boots to head in a way that would have made her seem predatory, were she not wearing that incredulous expression. Bill was the first to admit that he didn't look older than perhaps nineteen (at a stretch), and therefore it was unlikely that he would have already procreated. He, naturally, refrained from mentioning the age of the child he would be taking with him. Potter would be... eight, actually, on the 31st. It was another cosmic irony, that Potter was going to get an abduction for his birthday.

Kind of amusing.

"You'll have to fill in this form, of course…" McFusty told him, awkwardly fishing a sheet of parchment out of a leather-bound pile. She tracked ink over its reverse, but Bill accepted it without complaint.

"Who should I submit this to?"

"Any Gringotts bureaucrat, really," she said, already reading again, though _politely_ remaining outside of the parchment fortress behind her. Bill got the message, loud and clear. He took the form with him and decided that 'any bureaucrat' included Grainthunc, the goblin he was supposed to contact in the Alexandria office.

He did call out a half-hearted 'bye', but it failed to register.

x

"The one single thing useful about children…" Bill snarled at the staircase and glumly thought about the rest of the cake that his mother had left for tomorrow. He would have liked to take a piece with himself to eat before he went to bed, but considering he went to bed long after everyone else within the house, he could just go and grab it later.

Charlie rolled his eyes at him. "What?"

Bill scowled at the snot smears on his robe and promptly decided that children still weren't worth it. "Celebrations get cut short because of them." As if wasn't obvious enough. He had been subjected to parents giving him moths' worth of parental guidance within a couple of hours while admonishing his siblings, randomly attempting to accost him and keeping him from his well-deserved slice of cake, and he had had enough.

"You could have at least let mum hug you," Charlie chided him. "You're going away for… how long?"

Not long enough, Bill privately thought. Still, he was looking forward to Egypt and hoped to Merlin that Potter wouldn't mess it up for him.

"I've got something for you," Charlie said, exasperated, once it became obvious that Bill wasn't going to show the slightest hint of repentance for impugning their family integrity. He ducked into his room and Bill tapped his foot, making himself appear a little more impatient than he actually was. A tiny little… "Here!" Charlie exclaimed and thrust an official-looking scroll into his hand. "Got it from Frobisher. Don't use it unless you have to. It's a… last resort sort of thing."

Bill nodded noncommittally (it wasn't his fault that people tended to interpret that as acquiesce) and went to his room, ignoring Charlie's muttering about how he should have anticipated a lack of gratefulness. One day Charlie would be glad that Bill had a personal reason for wanting to repay that gesture. Family helped each other, perhaps, but Bill's general idea of help was, vaguely, giving them a good spanking so they learned.

He had never done so, of course. Never needed to. His mother kept all her children in a state of semi-terror and a bit of pain wasn't as strong a motivation to listen as it would have been normally.

Bill locked his door, unrolled the scroll and grinned.

Scratch last resort. He was going to do this. It was _so_ much better than feigning a familial relationship. Potter didn't look anything like him, anyway.


	3. Book 1: Abduction

A/N: Thanks for your feedback! Here is the third chapter – the last one in the first book. After careful deliberation I decided to post all four books as one continuous story: for your convenience and mine. Enjoy!  
Brynn

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Book One: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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Chapter Three: Abduction

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Bill transfigured his robes into a passable facsimile of what the more stylish muggles wore, and took a fortifying moment before plunging into madness by pressing the little button next to the door. The transfiguration wouldn't last very long, but he needed only an hour – on the outside.

"Boy! Get the door!" yelled the familiar shrill female voice.

"Yes, Aunt Petunia!" Potter called back in his trained monotone acquiesce. It, worryingly, reminded Bill of the witch at Gringotts.

The door opened. Half a foot behind the threshold stood a midget, looking up at Bill's face, spectacle-shielded eyes trained at Bill's hair.

Naturally.

Head cocked to the side with recognition, Potter wiped soap-bubbles off his hands into the folds of a shirt that hung past his knees. "Can I help you, sir?" he asked in the same toneless voice; the politeness had a stiffness to it, suggesting that he didn't understand why he should be mannerly, only knew that he had to be.

"Call your Aunt for me, Harry," Bill ordered.

"Your name, sir?" Potter inquired, clever – or trained well – enough to not let just anybody bother his guardians.

"Bill Septimus," Bill told him, as truthful as he could be while not implicating his family in his escapade.

The boy looked over his shoulder and, sabotaging his previous attempt on politeness, yelled: "Aunt Petunia, Mr Septimus wants to talk to you!"

The woman that strode out of the kitchen was tall and thin and, when Bill took into account her voice, a shrew. She was blonde and dressed in clothes that were so expensive that Bill's resentment for her rose – the least she could have done if she had that much money was buy Potter a shirt that fit him.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked, twisting her mouth in a smile that made her look a tiny bit less like a horse. It was easy to see who taught Potter, although she at least put an inflection on the words.

"I want to make a deal with you," Bill said. The woman's smile disappeared swiftly and she tried to protest, but Bill spoke over her: "I want Harry Potter. I'm going to take him with me. Whether I do or do not resort to using magic depends on your cooperation."

"Y-you're…" she stammered, grey and shaking. "You're one of _t-them_!"

"One of whom?" Bill inquired, while Potter watched from afar, curious like a cat. Was it possible-

"I won't have that… _that_ in this house! Get out! Out!" she shouted, jabbing her finger into the air.

In the end, it kind of made sense why she treated Potter like she did. If she feared magic to the point of hating it, she wouldn't have wanted a wizard in her house. That laid doubt to why Dumbledore would have left Potter here anyway, but to Bill that presented several advantages and disadvantages. It was unlikely that this woman had means of contacting any wizard if Bill took Potter away, and she was especially susceptible to threats of using magic; on the other hand, if Potter believed that magic didn't exist, he was going to be a pain until he adjusted.

Bill raised his wand.

"Look, Lady, I said I wanted to take the brat and I'm going to… else I'll try a couple of curses I haven't had the opportunity to practice." He was bluffing, but she wouldn't have known that. However, he hadn't watched his mouth and called Potter a brat within his hearing. There it went – his one chance to inspire any kind of trust in the sprog.

"N-no… I won't let you take him…" the woman insisted, backing away into the house.

Bill followed, closing the door behind himself.

"Yes, you will," Bill assured her. A couple of steps further the sitting room came into his view, complete with a fat boy staring at a box of moving pictures and eating peanuts from a huge, already half-empty bowl. "Don't you want to go with me, Harry?"

"No, sir," the boy replied, still perfectly civil.

"See?!" the woman screeched, briefly looked from Potter to the fat kid and back, and moved into the sitting room doorway to shield her – presumably – son from Bill with her body. "He doesn't want to go! Now leave my house!"

Bill didn't believe an eight-year-old kid (and that reminded him – there wasn't a hint of celebration in the house, despite the significant date) was the best person to judge their own environment and decide that neglect was permissible.

"This isn't a discussion," Bill said coolly. "I am informing you that I'm taking Potter with me. You will sign this-" he pulled out the scroll Charlie had gotten from Frobisher and handed it to the woman. She slapped it aside, and Bill, with a bit of vindictive glee, Summoned it back and handed it over again.

The woman yelped, but eventually took it, motivated by Bill's wand aimed at her chest. Taking in the writing, she went from grey to green and found enough indignation to glare at Bill.

"This… this is _disgusting_! What kind of freak are you?!"

Bill knew he wasn't always overly bothered by social norms, but what she was suggesting offended him. "I would not enforce this in any way. It is a _betrothal_ contract," he emphasised, "not a marriage or slavery contract. This obliges me to provide for the boy as his family would – I dare say better than you do. He retains all his rights and his free will; I gain guardianship of him until his majority."

"And then?!" the woman scoffed. "_Then_ you'll force him?"

Bill growled. "It is a _betrothal_ contract, woman! The Head of his family can withdraw from it at any time. At seventeen, _he_ will be the Head of his family!"

The woman's eyes narrowed and she read through the parchment again, taking more time than before. As she neared to the end, colour returned to her face. She glanced at Potter, and then at Bill. "And you will accommodate him?"

Bill nodded. He had assumed that was obvious, but it never surprised him when people were stupider than they seemed.

"Get me a pen, boy!" she ordered the boy and Potter scarpered, coming back just seconds later with a short thin blue stick in his hand. His aunt grabbed it and scratched her name on the appropriate place, bracing the parchment against the wall. "There! Now get out!"

"Go and pack your things," Bill told Potter, but the woman grabbed the boy by the scruff of his gigantic shirt and shoved him toward the front door.

"You said you'd accommodate him. Do so," she hissed at Bill and then stood in the hall, hands on her hips, waiting in undeservingly self-righteous silence until Bill decided that Potter couldn't have anything worth anything anyway, and they would deal. It wouldn't be easy in the beginning, but they'd take off.

Bill was smart enough to earn as much money as would be needed to support two people.

He grabbed Potter's wrist – he could feel all the bones in it – and pulled him out into the street. "Come on, idiot. You can't be as stupid as to want to stay here."

That seemed to help the boy decide. He blinked at Bill through the owlish glasses and nodded, matching Bill's pace so that he wouldn't need to be dragged.

x

"W-what…"

A glower from Bill shut the kid up. Silence wasn't necessary, given that they landed in a corner of an overpopulated market square of Alexandria. Potter stopped inching away and in a display of either cleverness, or rather admirable instincts, took a firm hold of Bill's robe.

Bill hadn't had a child clutch onto him since Ginny had begun differentiating between him and Charlie. Charlie, being the irredeemable softy that he was, allowed all manner of creatures (including little humans) to crawl all over him whenever they felt like it. Bill made it a point to discourage that kind of behavior, but given how easily small children disappeared in this city and reappeared sold into slavery hundreds of miles from here, he would be willing to bear with it. This time.

"We're not in Surrey anymore, are we?" Potter asked. He glanced at Bill and must have found an answer to his question somewhere in Bill's face, because he fell silent and contemplative again.

It wasn't healthy. Seven-year-olds weren't supposed to be contemplative.

"Don't get lost!" Bill growled and marched on, not as fast as he would have liked, but what could a man do with a short-legged brat latching onto his attire?

"Yes, sir," Potter panted, practically running to keep up.

Bill shouldered the way through the crowd and considerately kept his arm above Potter's head and shoulders, taking several blows that would have otherwise hit the child. Potter was nothing short of astounded, by Bill's actions and by the sights and sounds and smells around them. Bill let nothing of it penetrate – he would have time for culture shock later, now he had to find the office, find their lodgings, get himself and Potter settled and somehow come to terms with what he had done…

"Sir?" Potter piped up after ramming into Bill's hip when he stopped too rapidly.

"Quiet!" Bill commanded. He pulled the boy over to the wall with some illegible Arabic graffiti and leant down to meet his eyes.

Potter's eyes, behind the slightly magnifying lenses of his spectacles, stared up at him with a myriad of questions and a bit of frustration, but the child kept his mouth shut and waited, and Bill felt the first inkling of non-loathing for a human being younger than Charlie.

"You will remain silent inside," Bill said in a tone that he knew broke no argument – the tone that made even slimy little Slytherins heed him when he had been the Head Boy. "No matter what I say, no matter who or what you will see, you will save your questions for later. Is that understood?"

Potter nodded. He took a deep breath, straightened up (still barely coming to Bill's elbow) and determinedly faced the door.

Bill, for a split second, felt a totally irrational urge to squeeze the brat's shoulder or do something of the kind. A stupid gesture coddling stupid insecurities. He would not deny Potter what every child needed, but he would not do him the disservice of spoiling him.

x

"William Weasley," Bill said, peripherally noticing Potter looking at him with surprise and then anger. He ignored the child (who, so far, obeyed his directives and showed no sign of impending temper tantrum) and handed his papers over to an obese middle-aged Arabian man, whose accent made his English nigh on incomprehensible.

He said something like: "Dejungen?" and Bill guessed, from the direction of his stare, that he was asking about Potter.

"He's in my care. I was informed there was no problem with bringing him along."

The Arabian goggled at him, helplessly glanced at the empty seat next to him and in a higher-pitched voice called out to the ajar-standing door in the wall behind him.

"…sodding incompetents…" Bill muttered, not particularly caring if the man understood. Potter gave him another surprised look, this time free of anger.

A goblin – and that sight inspired a gasp of awe from Potter – clanged out of the backroom and approached to find out what the problem was. He seemed young – somehow greener, less mercerised – and with a lack of disobligingness characteristic of interns glanced through Bill's papers while the Arab bleated in Arabic.

"This is irregular, but perfectly legal," the goblin said, further disinterested. Apparently, he was one of those idealists that hoped to catch a wizard at foul play – Bill was now doubly glad that he had used the betrothal contract Charlie had scavenged for him.

The goblin separated the sheet about Potter and handed it to the bureaucrat, returned the rest of Bill's papers back to Bill, shoved himself away from the counter and, disgruntled, ambled back into the backstage. The Arab muttered in his native language, enough to make Bill scowl and glower – and get him into a right foul mood he would probably take out later on Potter – while he filled out another form, slapped a little brochure onto the counter and pushed the insignificant pile at Bill.

Bill took it and without further acknowledgment left the hall, Potter at his heels.

"Can I speak now, sir?" the boy asked once they were out in the street.

Bill should have corrected him. He should have let the brat call him by his first name, or even his surname, but it flattered him to be addressed as 'sir' and he was vain enough to enjoy it without feeling like he was being unfair to the boy. In fact, he didn't react at all; rather he opened the brochure and found the Apparition coordinates.

"Grab on," he said, offering the boy his arm. When two small hands clutched his wrist, he once again met Potter's questioning eyes. "Hold tight. Under no circumstances let go, understood?"

Potter piped his ingrained: "Yes, sir," and Bill Disapparated them.

x

Potter vomited.

He sicked up over sand, thank Merlin, and Bill Vanished the matter before it befouled the atmosphere and directed the boy to breathe deeply and slowly until he was capable of walking without falling on his face.

Potter fell quiet then, as if to spite Bill, who had expected to be barraged with questions. Bill engaged in a brief communication with the caretaker of the building – and found they would have snakes and scorpions under their beds once in a while – and obtained a key. He followed the instructions and the map in the brochure to a room on the first floor, much, _much_ better than on the ground floor – a perk of having a child with him. Had he been on his own, he could never have dreamt of a room like this: twelve times nine feet, a window facing the east and an actual rug on the floor, no matter how trodden.

Potter wrinkled his nose at it and tentatively approached one of the beds. He looked up at Bill then, as if struck mute.

With a sigh of exasperation, Bill went over, cast several detection charms (which Potter watched like a hawk) and proclaimed the bed safe for a child.

"It's for me, then, sir?" Potter asked, uncertain but painfully hopeful.

Bill wasn't able to do more than nod.

"And I'll be staying with you from now on?"

Begging his ancestors for patience, Bill nodded again. He cast the same series of detections on the other bed – he honestly could not care less which one was his – and sank into the bedding. It was less than an hour since he had left the Burrow, but he was, Merlin, _so_ tired.

"The Dursleys lied to me, didn't they…" Potter said quietly. He didn't sound angry, not like he had looked when he found Bill had lied about his name, but nevertheless hurt. "They told me the weird things I'm doing mean I'm a freak, but… it's magic, isn't it?"

Bill nodded. Good to know the kid wouldn't need everything spelled out to him. He had a feeling Potter was quite clever, only used to being overlooked so much that his cleverness centered on things out of public's sight. Bill understood, but he knew himself well enough to know that he was going to demand that the boy hone his intelligence and become as smart as he possibly could. There would be no slacking due to laziness, simply because Bill hated stupidity. He would not stand for it.

"I'm a wizard, then? And you – you are a wizard, and my aunt and uncle aren't, right?" he waited for Bill's acknowledgment to continue. "Are your mum and dad wizards, too?" Bill nodded again, wholly unprepared for the little bombshell that followed: "Did my mum and dad really die in a car crash?"

Bill let out another explosive sigh and sank down onto the bed. He liked to think of himself as jaded, but even so he was surprised how haltingly the words came when he finally spoke: "Your parents were murdered. A Dark wizard targeted them for some unknown reason and on 31st of October 1981 he murdered them. It is also unknown how you survived. People call you the Boy Who Lived."

Potter rolled over on his bed so that he faced the wall. Bill could see his frame shaking and deduced that he was crying, but didn't for the life of him know what to do about it. He just wasn't cut out for this.

It was going to end badly.


	4. Book 2: Correlation

A/N: Thank you for your continued interest and your reviews! Don't let the chapter numbering confuse you: Book Two is starting, that's why it's chapter one again. Summary of this book, if anyone's interested: Second in the Logical Fallacy Tetralogy. If pressed to describe their co-existence, Bill would say that he and Harry were dysfunctional – and continuous.  
Enjoy and don't forget to review.

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Book Two: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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Chapter One: Correlation

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Harry barged into their room, pouting. He pulled off his robe, wiped the sweat off his face into it and threw it into their improvised hamper. He drank half a jar of water and said a foul remark on the address of his day teacher – a man as frail and ancient as the papyrus scrolls in the Cairo Museum, but at least one that could speak comprehensible English – making Bill snicker.

"They treat me like a bloody priest…" he complained.

"Watch that mouth," Bill warned him. "I don't give a damn how you speak, but my mother'd be liable to scrub your tongue with soap if she heard you."

To tell the truth, at nearly thirteen, Harry (apart from having accumulated an amazing repertoire of profanities) was unexpectedly mature, craving responsibility and excitement in equal measures and surprisingly capable in most things he chose to pursue. To ease his way into the magical world, he had five years ago chosen to emulate Bill as much as he could. Only now he was beginning to find new paths on his own, but even so he had been in daily contact with curse-breaking for half of his life – first via Bill, then directly on site.

Still, the remark about the use of soup and its ordinariness startled Harry. He watched Bill for signs of amusement. Bill had a grievous lack of sense of humour, but once in a while he pulled a nasty trick on someone so that he'd get to laugh with schadenfreude.

"You'd let her, sir?" the boy asked.

That would be almost funny – Molly Weasley versus Harry Potter. Instant love on one side, instant hatred on the other. Bill had defied all expectations and somehow, unintentionally, molded Harry after himself.

"It would be a lot more trouble for me to try and stop her," he said earnestly. He would lay back and enjoy the show. "You'd just whinge about it afterwards, I'd tell you to shut up and that would be it. I'd spare myself an argument."

"You're always so pragmatic," Harry scoffed.

Bill blinked at the word. It fit into the brat's disconcerting vocabulary, but it was the first time he had heard that one. "You've been into my books again?"

Harry shrugged, unrepentant. "I like your books, sir. Sides', if you really didn't want me reading them, you would have warded them better."

There was no disputing that point, and Bill didn't insult Harry by trying to deny it. He had no problem with Harry reading whatever he wanted to, as long as he didn't kill himself and people around him trying some of the magic. Oh, and as long as Harry didn't wake him with nightmares.

Harry paused by the window for a moment, and with a sneer tugged the curtain over the slice of sunlight it had let through. The room grew darker.

"It's my bloody following – a gaggle of worshippers!" Harry went on grumbling as if the intermezzo about Bill's mother and his books hadn't happened. Bill didn't envy his little hanger-on, though the huddle of peers trailing in his footsteps and hanging on his every word would have been worse – and their devotion far less honest – in Britain. "Haidar says," Harry continued, crossing his arms in a way that reminded Bill of Snape, though Harry had never met the man, "that my being able to speak to snakes means that I'm Apophis' chosen or something. Load of bull, but explain that to these idiots…"

"I'm not bored enough to try," Bill shot that idea down. He pulled his blanket off of himself and threw it onto the floor. Harry, with the bitter knowledge that, as always, he would be the one left to tidy up, bent for the cloth and cast it into Bill's wicker chair.

"You're going home?" Harry asked, interpreting Bill's mood with annoying accuracy.

"For fourteen days, starting Friday. I'll be back for the opening of Sethmose's cow's tomb."

"These guys were stark raving mad," Harry proclaimed. "I'd maybe get it if he wanted to be buried with his cow – like that he loved her and didn't want to be without her in the afterlife or something…" Harry grimaced and Bill very nearly did, too. "…but to build her a tomb on her own, with a repository and everything…?"

Bill tuned Harry out, but he let him chatter on about inconsequential things. It was a quirk of Harry's – a show of insecurity à la Potter. He always did it just before Bill left for a longer time, and Bill had long since learned to tolerate it, although the first couple of times had been scarring for both of them.

Now, though, at the true beginning of his puberty, Harry was nothing like the pasty messed-up British runt Bill had dragged along. He was still thin for his height, fast and agile, dark-skinned from the sun and almost fitting in with the Arabs that he went to school with. He was also fairly outspoken, ridiculously assertive, ready to argue and, on occasion, to fight. It wasn't very often, as Harry was more difficult to provoke than Bill (presumably as a legacy of the time spent with relatives prone to belittling), but once in a while his fuse just blew and then things got spectacular.

"…and Marcella Blatt wanted me to help with an experiment-"

"Don't even think about it," Bill hissed.

Harry glanced at him and shrugged. "I wouldn't mind golden claws or something-"

"I'm sure," Bill snarled, getting up. Blatt's creations worked less than half the time, and most of them were dangerous not only to other people, but mostly to the subject. The golden claws had been a lucky chance, and their wielder had eventually died regardless of them. "Nevertheless, you will _not_ be experimented on, not by Blatt, and not by any other nutcase. Understood?"

Harry tilted his head to the side and eventually nodded. Bill, grumpy, rolled over and tried his damnedest to fall asleep.

x

"I hate this food," Harry said, wrinkling his nose. "I can cook better than that."

Bill didn't doubt it, but they didn't have the room for a kitchen corner next to their beds, not to speak about the fact that they would be kicked out of the barracks if anybody found them with an open flame. He had scrambled the internal wards, of course – he liked his privacy – but it just wasn't worth the risk.

"I could get a job. We'd be able to afford an apartment-"

"No," Bill said resolutely, grabbing a pint of watered-down beer. "You'll go to school."

"Sir, you could teach me in two hours what I learn in a week. I'm wasting time there."

It was, in a way, correct, Bill mused as he sat down. Harry barely paid attention in classes; he didn't ace a single test but floated easily. Mostly he (Bill just guessed this, but he had little doubt) read one of Bill's books under the desk.

"I don't care," Bill concluded.

At least he felt he had concluded, until Harry spoke up again: "I can do work in the tombs."

Bill ignored the boy. He had already said everything he wanted to say, and Harry was going to comply. It was simple as that.

"I already _am_ doing work in the tombs, sir. Please, let me-"

"I'm taking you with me today," Bill cut off the pleading before it seriously annoyed him and he lost his assistant for today's shift. Harry was twice as competent at the boring and sensitive work as the interns. Still, Harry loved the tombs (the work in them not so much), and as long as Bill didn't admit to actually appreciating Harry's presence there, it was the strongest reusable leverage on his young charge he had found to date. "If you want to retain the privilege, you will cease this line of conversation _now_."

Harry grabbed the set of camel-hair brushes from the side of Bill's tray and shut up.

x

The force field – or, if one wanted to be nit-picky, the _magic_ field – faded out. Bill removed the suction stones to the next cluster of runes and stretched while a new field established. His back protested the hour spent in forward bend by aching, and his neck _popped_ when he inclined his head.

He shook out his legs and decided to walk a little to get his blood to move in his veins. The only direction anyone with a shred of self preservation would walk was out, to the exit, so he ambled lamely out of the vizier's chamber, passed the somewhat brighter – teasing with sunset – mouth of the staircase and entered the chamber opposite. As a repository, it was naturally more interesting to the interns and as such decontaminated first; nobody these days was keen on shriveled corpses, they all wanted to see gold, jewels, ivory and whatnot…

With his cheekbone to his shoulder joint, Bill watched the shadow he knew was Harry leaning down and brushing fine dust and powder from the cartouches on the wall. Adamant about learning something that smacked of danger – or, as Harry insisted, adventure – the boy had studied anything he could get his grubby hands on until Bill allowed him to do at least the archaeological grunt work. The goblins didn't even blink at that – they did not give a damn about the life of a human, regardless of the human's age.

"How's it going?" he asked.

Harry should have noticed him entering the treasury, but it was very apparent that he hadn't. With his focus broken so suddenly he started and let go of the brush – then he spotted Bill, clearly recognisable in the glow of the hovering Lightsphere, and gasped with relief…

…blowing on the cartouche in front of him. Sprinkle of glittering soft sand was dislodged and created a fantastical dance of shapes and reflections in the darkness, so realistic Bill could almost believe it tangible, and then something went _click_.

Bill sprang into motion – a reaction instilled in him throughout years of stalking the tombs – but no matter how fast he reacted, it wasn't fast enough.

Harry drew his wand and then there was a flash of pale blue, colliding with a deadly shower of golden liquid from above, where there should have been nothing but bare ceiling. The sand-touched stone slabs of the floor hissed and smoked while Harry practically folded unto himself, arms locked around his ribcage, wand clutched in his fist. He breathed raggedly, terrified and shivering, but he _breathed_ and the shield around him remained steady and active until the acid burrowed into the depths of the desert and it was safe again to take a step.

Bill grabbed Harry by his upper arm, aware that he was going to leave a bruise yet uncaring, and dragged the boy into the entrance hall, up the stairs and into the blood-red vestiges of sunlight.

x

"Get Jackson! Now!"

The rugrats scattered, but leastways half of them were scared enough of an enraged Bill to look for the administrator and inform him that he was required.

"Stop freaking out!" Harry yelled, and Bill gave him a sound slap to get him to finally shut the hell up so that a man could have a while to think. It was getting dark and cold, rapidly, and the physical sensation helped Bill regain a semblance of balance.

Before he could truly find it in himself to not kill Howard Jackson for the supreme stupidity in marking Sethmose's treasury as clear, the squirts were back and dragging a whole lot of grown people with them – mostly other curse-breakers, but also archaeologists, Egyptologists and Howard Jackson himself, pale and fatigued with advancing sickle-cell disease. Bill looked around for Harry, but the boy had – cleverly – disappeared in the crowd.

"Which idiot declared Sethmose's repository safe?" Bill asked in a tone that froze the commotion.

Understanding dawned on several faces and Jackson, clearly feverish, found himself in the spotlight and floundering to recall what on Earth was Bill talking about. "W-what is the problem?" he asked, wetting his parched lips. A veiled woman, with only a pair of dark eyes visible of her face, stepped up to him and wiped his face with a wet cloth. He seemed to awaken after that, and glared at Bill. "I should have known…" he snarled. "You and your boy-toy, Weasley – nothing but trouble!"

Bill didn't respond to that, and hardly any of the bystanders (bar a couple of the freshest interns) dared as much as titter. Howard Jackson's second allusion was patently untrue and therefore not worth a reaction. As to the relationship between Bill and Harry – that had been suggested repeatedly over the years and Bill still found it more insulting to those whose brains came up with the idea than to either himself or the boy.

"I want to know who declared the repository safe," Bill repeated stonily. Devant, Babington and Hawass – the curse-breakers who he knew had been working on the tomb in the past week – shared confused glances.

Jackson normally didn't intimidate well, but his health was already failing and he had never been able to control Bill more than Bill wanted to be controlled. He sweated like a pig over campfire. "I- well, that is to say-"

Bill nodded, understanding, and turned to the part of audience he suspected Harry was hidden among. "It seems you've got clearance for real curse-breaking, brat," he said with a glacial smile. He wouldn't allow it, of course, and Harry knew it, but the audience didn't and was appalled at the gross negligence. Jackson sputtered, but his objections were drowned out by the yelling: this time the evidence that he couldn't manage his job anymore was clear, and the scientists, many of whom had their families living on the site with them, would insist on a change. They were going to have a new administration, and Bill was going to cash in some favours and for once get to the trough.

So he left Howard Jackson to the jackals keen on a piece of him and went to find Harry and make sure he wasn't really hurt.

x

Harry emerged the day after the next one, after school, with smudges of bruise-healing cream on his cheek that were clearly for show, because Bill made damn sure he never hit hard enough to leave the boy hurting afterwards – that was, after all, what had made him decide to rescue Harry from his relatives. Harry wasn't sheepish about his absence, but he wasn't piqued about Bill hitting him either. He seemed overly contemplative, and the lack of nervous chatter started getting to Bill after half an hour.

"Where have you been?" he asked with a little less true interest than should have been expected of him as a guardian. It was easy not to care – Harry knew where to go to get what he wanted and how to get out of almost any problem that found him. With a kid that so obviously could take care of himself, Bill felt he didn't need to bother trying to 'bring him up'.

Harry glanced up from his book – he was doing schoolwork for once, math if Bill could see correctly – and shrugged. "Around."

One-word answer a day before Bill was leaving for Britain rang warning bells. Apparently, Harry had holed up for two days at Blatt's, which Bill hated yet decided not to comment upon for worry of sending Harry straight back there to nurse an insulted ego.

"I guess yesterday is proof enough that you'll be fine by yourself for two weeks," he remarked testily and went about to gather the rubbish he had got for his siblings – it mostly got him out of having to attend birthdays and Christmases with his family, so he figured he might as well. Ginny loved him to death for it, the sucker.

"Go and have fun with people who care that you're healthy and hale or what… sir." Harry grumbled, rubbing his cheek irritably. Bits of the dried cream flaked off and fell on the page of his textbook.

Bill shook his head as he stuffed the trinkets into his bag. "You haven't got that much to be jealous about."

"I'm not jealous!" Harry protested vehemently enough to dispute his own statement. He deflated when he saw the look Bill was giving him. "Okay, maybe I am a little. Hate me 'cause I wish my mother were alive."

To an objective spectator Harry Potter might have seemed a poster tragic hero, but Bill saw him more as a bratty pre-teen with an awe-worthy ability to somehow survive pretty much everything, like a cockroach. Therefore it was easy to forget that while he kept seeing the boy as someone who cared about snakes and cool magic above everything, there was a hidden part of Harry that longed to have caretakers that would supply all the fluffiness he felt he was due.

Harry had been orphaned too early to know that a mother wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world. "Mine keeps bitching about my hair," Bill muttered, tugging onto a coppery strand that once again escaped the confines of his ponytail.

"You hadn't had it cut in five years, sir," Harry pointed out, as if he was one to talk. Bill actually pitied him a bit – for whatever unexplored presumably magical reason even if the kid ever wanted to grow out his hair, he likely wouldn't be able to. Bill figured it was something to rib him about once he began to get snubbed by girls.

"It hadn't grown an inch in the past two," he pointed out, giving up on the stray strand and simply letting his hair loose. It spread over his bare shoulders, tickling, but the discomfort was worth it to see Harry's jealous glare. He seated himself on the sill, with the setting sun giving his mane a hint of gold.

The boy huffed. "I think a wizard's hair just does what it believes it should be doing, regardless of what the wizard wants it to do." Then he gathered all his injured pride and composed a truly manliness-shattering observation: "If your hair got any longer, sir, you'd look like a girl."

"You want that mother too much, don't you?" Bill snorted, turning the insult right back at Harry. "I wouldn't look like her, kid, even though she was a redhead."

"Then you could marry Devant and we'd be one unhappy dysfunctional family."

Bill grimaced. Sheer unpalatability of the suggestion aside, Harry was once again showing vocabulary inappropriate for his age in a context that was both correct, and striking close to home. Bill was the eldest child in a textbook case of a loving family, but he too often felt like he didn't belong in it. Harry's parents had been murdered and he had been dumped with relatives that had cared just enough to once in a while check if he hadn't died while working his butt off… Not to speak about his current guardian, with whom he had what could be described as 'ambiguous relationship' if one had fondness for massive understatements.

Yes, 'dysfunctional' characterised them both too damn well.

"Wash your mouth, Harry," Bill snapped half-heartedly. "You'd want Devant as your father?" He was a little curious. The French curse-breaker was sufferable, as nigh on all curse-breakers were, but he was as normal as Bill was compassionate, and his eccentricities freaked out everyone with a hint of common sense. Unsurprisingly, they amused Harry.

"I'd want my father to be my father," Harry countered irritably, with the candour of a seasoned politician. "But he's too busy being dead to be a dad."

Bill groaned and covered his face with his hands. That had been too terrible a sentence for an intelligent brain to absorb without scarring. "Sometimes I hate you."

"You could have saved yourself the pain and left me with the Dursleys," Harry replied coldly, hitting a weak spot with his cold, hard truth. "You're not my parent, sir – you're not even in loco parentis. You're just my betrothed who never had the slightest intention to fulfill his promise. You think _I_ don't hate _you_? I've got reason enough."

Bill stood from the windowsill, Summoned his bag and slammed the door behind himself as he left the room. He wasn't going to wait until morning to leave for Britain.


	5. Book 2: Causation

A/N: Once again, I'd like to thank everybody who reviewed or otherwise expressed their appreciation! You rock!

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Book Two: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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Chapter Two: Causation

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"Bill – oh, my beautiful son!"

The air was squeezed from Bill's lungs by his constrictor of a mother, while the smaller kids gathered in the kitchen to get underfoot.

When the madwoman released him and dabbed at her eyes to stave off the flood of tears, Bill fished in his bag for the knick-knacks he had brought for his siblings and distributed them with a vague smile plastered on his face and a fervent hope to avoid further contact of the hugging kind. He wasn't that lucky, though – every single one of them found it necessary to climb all over him; even Percival unbound enough for a brief chest-to-chest collision.

Bill's cheeks hurt, and he mentally cursed when he realised he wasn't going to get it over with all at once, because his father had just gone off to work and would return for breakfast.

Ginny oohed and aahed over a little golden pendant with some kind of precious gem. "It's beautiful! What is it?"

Bill uncharitably thought that it wasn't that amazing, but his parents would never have been able to afford it anyway. "It's a charm to ward off nightmares." No one knew how to ward off nightmares as well as the curse-breakers – mostly because no one had nightmares like the curse-breakers.

"Oh, wow!"

Ronald started off into the garden to try out his dragonfly construct. Percival received an identical one, but he at least deigned to say 'thank you'. The twins offered Bill to get him a drink, but he – wisely, in his own opinion – declined. His mother's letters were full of tales of woe about those two.

"How's Romania?" he asked Charlie, when the door was finally free and Bill could escape his mother's scrutiny. Charlie yanked on his ponytail, and Bill cast a Tripping Jinx on him in retaliation.

"It's dragons," Charlie replied, as though that explained everything. To him it might have, but Bill couldn't see the attractiveness of huge cranky fire-breathing lizards. "How's Egypt?"

"Vastly the same as ever. Although we are going to get a new administrator soon."

"I won't even ask how you made that happen," Charlie snorted, shaking his head. It was probably a good thing he didn't inquire. "How's Harry?"

"Alive and whole," Bill growled.

His irritation must have been more than obvious if Charlie reacted by pointing out: "And the reason you're here half a day earlier than you planned."

They reached Bill's room and halted at the door, because Bill was determined to pretend to go to sleep and not the least bit inclined to let Charlie in.

Charlie shoved him in retaliation and, less than playfully, stated: "I should warn you, Billy-boy. Dad won some kind of lottery, and he and mum are thinking about using the money for a trip to see where you're living."

"Instead of saving it so that they could buy Ginny a couple of new textbooks or a uniform that isn't second-hand," Bill snarled, and shut the door into Charlie's face. He went straight for his desk to compose a letter of instruction for Harry and hoped it would arrive before they did, though as he would be sending it with Errol that was rather unlikely.

x

They were all too excited by the _sound and sights and smells_ (Arthur loved Egyptian muggles, Molly Egyptian food; Charlie and the twins were amazed by the Sphinx and the Pyramids with the promise of dead mummified people, Percival couldn't be torn apart from the eldest peace-treaty in the world written in hieroglyphs and Ginevra went starry-eyed at Egyptian clothing) and Bill was ready to wring their necks one by one by the time they arrived at the excavation site. Bill wanted them to ideally by-pass the facilities completely and go straight to the tombs, but he had had to request a portkey – which, naturally, landed them in the improvised square between the barracks, the mess-hall, the hospital and the tent-camp.

Immediately, their ears were assaulted by high-pitched voices yelling in Arabic.

Bill took the lead. "The tomb is this way-"

"For goodness sake, leave me alone!" a familiar voice cried, cracking embarrassingly in the middle of the sentence. Harry, up by the well, stopped trying to fend off the horde of his child-worshippers and simply ran for it. He jumped over the aqueduct construction, attracting the avid attention of the rest of the Weasleys.

"Man, that was-" one of the twins begun to say, but shut up suddenly when Harry skidded to a halt in front of Bill, raising a low wall of sand.

"Back already, sir?" Harry asked (apparently Errol hadn't made the journey yet) and, quickly, but with great attention, surveyed Bill's company. "I don't suppose you're up to digging up Sethmose's cow," he said with a light disdain for the relatively pale-faced, freckled group of people.

"Not today," Bill replied, measuring Harry from hair to boots. Something wasn't right. Something… "What did you do?" he growled.

Harry cringed.

"Bill, who is this boy?" his mother asked. Bill took marginal delight in disregarding her.

"I asked you something."

"I disobeyed you, sir," Harry said bluntly. The twins laughed at the address and Charlie snickered, but Bill was much more worried about the way Harry had managed to screw up. He gripped the boy's jaw and forced him to look up.

"Bill," his father spoke, placating, and put his hand of Bill's shoulder. Bill ignored him, too.

"Marcella offered to help me. I consented," Harry muttered. There was a milky membrane covering most of his eyes – like a second lid. It looked unnatural and Bill despised it at first sight. Harry nattered on: "You know the glasses were impractical. She put in a transparent layer, like a muggle contact lens… and when she was already working on me-"

Bill released Harry and set out to the field hospital in a brisk stride. "Blatt!" he called out. "Get out here or I'll kill you in front of your little victims!"

Harry ran up after him and grabbed the back of his robe. "I wanted it!"

Bill caught the child's wrists and flung him bodily away from himself. "I told Blatt what I would do if she dared touch you." Harry's stupid 'friendship' with the woman sent him into an impotent rage in the past, but it would end now.

"I asked for it!" Harry yelled, and Bill knew that he was lying. Harry had consented, perhaps, whether under a spell, or affected by substance, or simply worn down in the absence of determination that Bill helped provide, but that was far from actually asking to be made into an experiment.

"W-weasley?" Blatt stammered, shuffling out of the field hospital door. A long, blood-stained white coat waved behind her in the rising wind. Bill took a single look at the surprise and slight fear written on her wrinkled face and cast a Heart-attack Hex faster than she could comprehend in how much danger she was.

Harry watched the scene with tears running down his face, but he hadn't made another attempt to stop the inevitable from happening, and afterwards he came up to Bill and tangled his hand in Bill's robe.

They would have to deal with the administration later, but goblins understood ultimatum, its rejection and the consequences. If not actually winning him respect, this event wouldn't count against him in any way.

"William!" a perplexed and furious voice shouted, and Bill spun to face his scowling father.

He had, for a moment, forgotten that his family was there at all.

x

After surreptitiously instructing Harry on how to act around his family, Bill introduced him with the right amount of causality to make him seem unimportant, belying the previous scene. Percy, at seventeen the same colossal prick as ever, offered Harry a hand to shake (which Harry pretentiously ignored in favour of a traditional Islamic salute), and the younger four descended upon the boy like flies on honey. While Harry did what he didn't do well – fended off over-excited youngsters – Bill stole a moment to talk to the three adults. His parents were still gaping at him as though he had spontaneously grown a halo – or horns.

"I can't believe you killed… you killed a person… right in front of us…" Charlie mumbled, with his eyes fixed on the spot where the carcass had fallen before Bill had banished it.

Bill liked to think that if somebody had messed with him or his siblings, one of his parents would have zapped the fucker with something fatal. Perhaps they were soft enough to use only a Stunner and wait for the judicial system to dole out punishment, but in Egypt the judicial system was nigh on nonexistent and nobody relied on it. Here justice was swift and personal.

"Killed whom?" Harry asked with a sweet cluelessness that looked very wrong on his face. On the other hand, it instantly melted Bill's mother, who hurried forward and squeezed the boy half to death.

"Oh, you poor thing, you shouldn't have seen that!" she cried, apparently overlooking the fact that while Harry might have been momentarily upset, once he had wiped his tears there was no sign of emotional upheaval – not even red-rimmed eyes.

"Seen what?" Harry said – Bill suspected it was mostly to free himself from the constriction of the woman's arms. His eyes were wide – and shielded by the second lid, milky grey. It looked like he was blind. Quite in spite of himself, Bill couldn't wait to ask what Harry was seeing through that.

"Bill – and that lady-" Bill's father stuttered, while Fred and George (genuinely clueless) stuffed a chocolate frog down the back of Ron's t-shirt and Ginny kept inching closer to Harry, a bit star-struck.

"Oh, that!" Harry giggled. Harry never giggled… but Harry also never looked sweet or innocent. He sometimes got emotional and displayed a little fragility, but he absorbed even the darkest kind of knowledge frighteningly easily, no matter how shocking it should have been by right. "They do this all the time, ma'am. No worry. She'll be alright by Wednesday."

If Bill hadn't been the one to cast the curse, he would have believed the drivel totally. Charlie looked doubtful for a second, but then joined his parents in smiling in relief.

Crisis averted.

"Your English is very good," Percy complimented Harry, deliberately and in a somewhat pompous manner designed specifically to redirect attention and create an air of authority. Unfortunately for Percy, Harry could have persons of authority of that level for breakfast if he wanted to. Aside from the political clout his real name carried, Harry's personality was similar to Bill's – their utter disregard of other people's discomfort made most of their direct superiors nervous.

"I'm told my parents were English," Harry allowed, taking a step to the side, so that he could walk between Percy and the twins – as far from Ginny and possible. "They've been dead for years and didn't leave behind much. Jeep went up in fire – my magic saved me."

Sometimes Bill himself was astounded by how amazing a liar his protégé was. He found himself listening to the story, enraptured, memorising details in case he would later be asked.

"Is it him?" Charlie asked under his breath. His befuddlement sparked laughter from Bill, and he nodded. Charlie shuddered. "That's crazy…"

"Are you muggle-born, then?" Percy questioned with unfailing poise. His tone was so bland that Harry would have had to be retarded to think him truly interested.

The boy grinned, and with enthusiasm expected of someone his age pulled Percy forth. It was beyond funny to watch the stiff teenager try to jog with the proverbial stick ever wedged up his posterior. Harry captured Ginny's hand in his right, and set out with a hyped-up call of: "Come on, guys! I'll show you a dead cow!" that had Bill's mother clutching at her chest.

x

The Weasley family had toured the entire excavation area and, fortunately, after the twins attempted to lock Percy in a tomb, their mother forbade repeated visits. In high spirits nevertheless, the clan took off back to their hotel and Bill could follow an offended Harry back to the barracks.

"What the heck was that about?" Harry asked in a dead tone, sinking onto his bed. He was clearly exhausted. They had not done much – certainly nothing as tiring as what the boy was used to – but apparently the amount of acting and lying involved was stressful to him.

In a rare show of solidarity Bill knelt and helped Harry untie his bootlaces. Harry kicked off the boots, threw his socks at the hamper (which shuffled forward and opened its lid to catch them) and set to removing his robe. He seemed half out of it.

"My father won a lottery. They just suddenly decided they wanted to come." For a while Bill waited for a response, before he acknowledged that it wouldn't come. "You were superb today, Harry," he said, uncomfortable.

Harry scoffed resentfully. "I still can't believe what you did to Marcella."

"One day you will be taking care of someone," Bill replied testily, "and I'll bet you will be willing to do anything to protect them. Maybe you don't see it, but she abused you."

Harry didn't see it – that much was obvious. He probably wanted to hate Bill for it, too, but he didn't say so. Instead, he mentioned an entirely different emotion: "Are you ashamed of me?"

Without the slightest idea where that had come from, the best that Bill could do was: "What do you see when you look through that?"

Harry turned his membrane-protected eyes to Bill and sneered. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

x

Since Charlie was an adult man, his mother couldn't quite keep him on a leash, and he tended to spend evenings with Bill, observing Harry with a disapproving frown. Harry did his best to keep track of the attention, but he didn't manage to hide his true nature – the nature of a cold, slippery, self-serving Bill-clone.

"I think you've failed somewhere, brother," Charlie remarked one night when his coffee had gone cold and he was feeling particularly uncharitable. "The _poor boy_-" he said this in an imitation of their mother, "-has to resort to learning the theory on love."

Indeed, Harry was perched on the windowsill, with his back against the frame, and the wind ruffled the pages of a tome with reproductions of texts rescued from one of the newer tombs. Its name shouldn't have been understandable to Charlie, so it was reasonable to assume that he had already questioned Harry about it.

"Sod love, Charlie," Bill replied dispassionately, reheating the liquid in Charlie's cup for the simple reason that reheated coffee was disgusting. He settled on his bed with his back against the wall and waited for his brother's expression once he'd had a taste. "I've got his loyalty. That's so much better."

Charlie disappointed him by setting the cup down and mirroring Bill's position. Harry turned over a page, as though he would be able to stop himself listening when the conversation centered on him.

"What's his loyalty worth when he resents you?" Charlie quipped, wearing a self-satisfied smile that Bill thought didn't suit him. That smile didn't suit anybody but Bill and, on rare occasions, Harry.

"He doesn't resent me."

"But he will-"

"Still. _What_ is _Harry Potter's_ loyalty _worth_?" Bill burst into laughter. What was Harry Potter's loyalty worth? What was _Harry Potter's_ loyalty worth?! Apparently, Charlie had learnt from Percival the Whiny just how to spout the most hilarious nonsense while utterly convinced of its truth. Was there someone in the world without a Dark Mark on their forearm who wouldn't sell their soul for Harry Potter's loyalty?

Bill, were he inclined to enter into politics, might have easily been one of the most influential Englishmen. Just like that.

"Sometimes I'm ashamed to be related to you," Charlie told him, disgusted.

Harry turned a page again – way too soon after the last one considering that he was reading in musnad – and Bill just caught a last trace of amusement disappearing from his face, washed away into nothing. Harry remained empty, just his eyes followed the lines of the book.

"But mostly you're proud," Bill shot right back. He leant forwards and captured Charlie's entire attention in a way he had learnt to utilise when his brother was still a toddler. Charlie was adult now, but he had not yet found how to extricate himself from the manipulative captivity. Bill smirked. "You're such a good little Dumbledore's-boots-licking Light Gryffindor that you feel you shouldn't be, because I have the guts to do what is best for _me_… but in the end you're always proud."

He held Charlie's eyes for a while longer, just so they all knew that he controlled that exchange, that it was up to him and only him when Charlie may be released. He thought, with a mixture of pride and loathing, that if he tried to do it to Harry he would be poked between the ribs by something sharp, just so that he would next time mind where he had forgotten his eyes.

Then Bill turned away to refill his cup from the pot.

"You don't know me as well as you think you do," Charlie said. He didn't try to hide his resentment, but he was too defensive for his defense to mean anything. He was frightened and feebly attempting to convince everyone that he wasn't. "I don't love you enough to forgive you _everything_."

Charlie had probably meant it as a warning (or, rather, as emotional extortion, for there was no justification in using that content-empty word), but as it followed his previous assertion, Bill couldn't help himself but laugh again and sarcastically ask: "How about forgiving me for Harry?"

"He has to do that himself," Charlie pressed through gritted teeth. "He doesn't look unhappy. He doesn't look happy either." Paradoxically, he didn't look at the boy he was speaking of, or he would have seen Harry lift his eyes from the page and cast a rather offensive look at him.

Bill shrugged. The coffee warmed his insides. "I couldn't tell. I don't think I have a concept of 'happy'." He should probably get Harry down from the window and shut it, or they were both going to catch a cold.

"I used to miss you, Bill," Charlie said scornfully, like it would shatter Bill's worldview if he'd learnt otherwise, "but I'm glad you've gone away. The kids are better off without you around." And Bill was better off without them, indubitably. "I only hope that you don't hurt Harry too badly."

"I wouldn't hurt him-"

"I've already seen you push him around and shout at him, and that was in the middle of a populated area. I dread to imagine what you might do behind closed doors."

"I've never injured him," Bill hissed righteously. "Ask him."

Charlie rolled his eyes, immediately dismissing the suggestion as pointless. "He's a shining example of Stockholm syndrome."

"He's not my prisoner!" Bill protested, now becoming honestly angry. "I'm not his captor. He's free – in fact, he frequently spends the night elsewhere, sometimes without even the courtesy of informing me beforehand."

"And that says a lot about his trust in you," Charlie rebuffed him, as if confidence was the scale on which trust could be measured. Harry didn't confide in Bill – he relied on Bill. That was something wholly different, but in Charlie's mind, in the mind of a man who remained the son of his mother and never aspired to become a unique personality, those two concepts were inherently inseparable.

"He always comes back," Bill said. That was what mattered. That was what described them – they were as continuous as they were dysfunctional.

Charlie shrugged. "He loves you. I said it's Stockholm syndrome-"

"He does not." Of course he didn't. The idea was preposterous. Bill had no perception for love, be it his or directed at him. He simply lacked the interface. Love bounced off of him without penetrating. And in this Harry was like him. "Ask him. He does not love me. I wouldn't want him to."

Charlie stood and turned to the window. With a bit of patronising that was certain to anger the boy, he spoke: "Harry?"

"Yes, Charles?" Harry lifted his head, and gave the look of a newspaper-reading father being disturbed by a pre-school age son. It reflected the patronising, in a splendidly magnified amount, back.

"I need to ask you a fairly personal question." Charlie sounded a little timid – on purpose, of course, for one could not spend a long time in close quarters with William Weasley and come out of the experience with their innocence intact – but certain of his victory. It was foolish of him; he had never won an argument with Bill, what could have made him think he had a chance now?

"Sir?" Harry queried.

Bill nodded and clarified: "It's up to you if you answer. You don't have to."

Having Bill's consent, Charlie took Harry's for granted and artlessly blurted: "How do you feel about Bill?"

Harry responded with exaggerated politeness, which was his momentarily chosen method of mocking Charlie's pathetic attempt at indirectness: "Grateful… in the obligatory 'he rescued me from abusive relatives' way. Sir gets on my nerves occasionally and is way too controlling for my liking, but I expect other underage wizards have it worse, so I keep my mouth shut."

Charlie was stumped.

"See?" Bill tried to fake unconcern, but inside he was too gleeful for it not to show.

Still, while Charlie might have been naïve and not a creative thinker, he wasn't stupid. "I hear you are a good actor, Harry," he _under_stated.

Harry considered this carefully, and offered a careless dip of his head. "Yes, I dare say you wouldn't notice if I was lying to you."

"Would Bill?"

"If I didn't want him to?" Harry contemplated for a moment. "I don't think so."

Bill let Charlie leave with the tiniest smidgen of satisfaction, because when it came down to it, the one who truly won was Bill – because Harry's accomplishments were, by proxy, Bill's.

Then he rounded on Harry, who was just swift enough to scarper from the sill before Bill had a chance to pull him off.

"That wasn't what he wanted to hear, was it?" Harry spoke up mischievously.

Well, it certainly wasn't what Charlie had _hoped_ to hear. "He's too honourable to have wanted anything but the truth. Was it what he wanted?" Bill turned the question back, curious if Harry truly thought he was a good enough liar to convince Bill, or if it had been just posturing.

"Who knows?" Harry said, grinning. "Either you care for me more than I do for you, or our paradigms are way too different to consolidate."

_Paradigms_? _Consolidate_? Bewildered, Bill shook his head and decided that, clearly, the most efficient way of making kids learn something was forbidding them the knowledge.


	6. Book 2: Implication

Book Two: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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Chapter Three: Implication

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Finally dawned the day when the Weasley family circus would leave Egypt and set out on their two-minute journey back home. Bill packed an obligatory 'surprise' into his mother's luggage while she wasn't looking, and knew he would be loved for another year or so, before the memory of the present would fade and he would be obligated to present another one.

"What an adventure it was!" Molly gushed, and pressed onto the pile of things she was trying to fit into a trunk – Percy's school-trunk, if Bill wasn't much mistaken.

The load wouldn't budge, and as Arthur stood a couple of paces to the side and did nothing, so Bill eventually broke and cast a dimensioning spell.

"Oh, thank you!" the woman exclaimed and flitted around, picking their last stray possessions from their spots on the shelves. The hotel room became barer by the second. "I _do_ hope the boys are packed- Fred! George!"

There was no response from the twins and Arthur leant out of the window as if to check that they weren't outside obtaining some last minute class A contraband they would try and smuggle into Britain.

"Percy!" Molly yelled, and a second later a freckled face was stuck into the room through the doorway. "Go and check if your brothers are ready," she ordered with her usual amount of consideration for her children's autonomy of being. Percival, having been reared to serve authority from young age, obeyed with nary a word of acknowledgment.

Bill spent perhaps half a minute being fiercely glad of the distance that separated him from his family most of the time. Then he checked that his mother would be able to package the rest of their belongings without help, and went in search of Harry, who had, for some obscure reason, volunteered to see the party off.

He found the kid Disillusioned, lurking atop the carved railing that prevented careless guests from taking dives into the limestone floor of the entrance hall. He leaned against the same railing and tried to make out what it was that Harry hunted.

"Should I Obliviate them?" Harry asked under his breath, quite clearly meaning Fred and George who had taken advantage of being without the jurisdiction of the British Ministry and used magic to pack, and therefore had time to torment Percival, whose cherished Head Boy badge was really too shiny a target not to attract their attention.

Percival cursed, yelled, reasoned and even pleaded before he caught himself, but the twins kept grinning and passing the piece of metal to the other one as soon as their brother advanced on it. Percival was blockheaded enough not to pretend that it didn't bother him and walk away – what was the worst the two could do to a Hogwarts badge? Change the letters around, perhaps? As a N.E.W.T.s student, that shouldn't deter Percival for more than five minutes.

"They don't look like it would matter either way," Bill snorted.

"You really don't think much of them, do you?" Harry said and then, without waiting for an unnecessary response, continued: "But the twins aren't stupid. They're observant, too. I don't think they know who I am, but I wouldn't put it past them to figure it out… best to play it safe…"

"And how safe would tempering with their minds be?"

"Therein lays the dilemma," Harry replied. He shifted on the railing – Bill marveled at his balance, because it was a too damn narrow railing – and grumbled something unintelligible.

Ginny stepped out of her room, with Charlie just behind her, levitating her suitcase. Ron lugged his own out of the room he shared with Charlie and Percival. They all piled up by the top of the stairs, and they were all waiting for the parents to finish packing and join them.

Charlie dropped in into each of their rooms to check if they hadn't forgotten anything and came back with armful of material. While the kids converged, Percival somehow snatched his badge back and Harry slid down onto the floor and cancelled his Disillusionment.

"I really _should_ do it, I think… but I don't want to…"

Bill barely refrained from rolling his eyes. In his view, the twins couldn't get much more brain-damaged. "Oh, for goodness sake! Do it or don't do it, but decide finally!"

True to herself, his mother entered the hallway just in time to hear him speak. "Bill! Do not dare yell at the boy, young man-"

"Hey, Lady!" Harry cut in before she got into her lecturing mode. "Leave sir alone, alright? He's an adult man, independent of you – he doesn't need you to wipe his-"

"Well I never!" With her hands folded on her chest as if to guard her heart, Molly went pale and then redder than her hair. She must have been truly appalled, and Bill understood. He even commiserated: there were too many foul-mouthed little children in the world, but Harry had the unfortunate – or fortunate, depending on the point of view – skill to make his remarks pointy and direct them at the sensitive spots.

"You'll respect my mother, brat! Understood?" Bill growled, and he meant it.

Harry either didn't realise he was digging a metaphorical grave for himself, or he had no fear of Bill's retribution, because he shrugged, perfectly unconcerned, and said: "As much as I'd respect any menopausal control-freak."

Bill's eyes narrowed to slits and he gave Harry the glare he usually reserved for the maggots that invaded meat when it wasn't charmed well-enough. "You…"

"She _intrudes_, sir," Harry protested, like they were having a serious debate and he wasn't going to bow to some kind of principle on Bill's say-so. Paradoxically, though it was what Bill had ever worked to instill in Harry, now it angered him. "She doesn't get the way we work – she's never seen how we are. What bloody right does she have to try and change that?" He was staring up with those freakish eyes of his, imploring Bill to _understand_. Bill didn't. He didn't even have the ambition to understand.

"You're smarter than this, Harry," he repeated the well-used argument of the adult to the young, when the adult is too lazy to formulate a valid reason.

"Maybe…" Harry acquiesced, for he truly _should_ have been smarter, and at the very least he was clever enough to recognise it. "But I'm self-conscious, sir, and you know it. If I feel threatened, I'll fight."

"Threatened?" What did he – Harry bloody Potter, the ward of William Septimus Weasley – have to be threatened by? He had the world at his feet; all he had to do was reach out for it, and he knew that nobody would dare stand in his way.

"Don't be so short with the dear!" Molly exclaimed, reasserting herself after she had breathed through her shock. "He has lived through such tragic events – we cannot imagine-"

"Perhaps," Charlie spoke up, "he is still living through tragic times. Who is there to care for him?"

Molly went into raptures and Arthur began to look distinctly uneasy, searching around himself for someone to tell him what was the politically correct, Gryffindor, _Light_ thing to do. The only one who appeared was a porter, who charmed their luggage onto a walkie-truck and directed it to follow him down the stairs.

"Oh, you poor boy!" Molly gushed and Harry cringed further and further away from her, eventually doing his best to hide behind Bill. Bill didn't budge, so that plan was dashed.

"She's going to eat me," Harry deadpanned with the cool certainty of a child that had read one too many fairy-tales about evil witches and houses of gingerbread. "Barring that, she's going to drag me to some social-services hag to make sure I'm properly 'taken-care' of," he concluded with a glare in Charlie's direction.

Charlie looked serious, and Bill figured he was thinking himself righteous and just, not just petty in his vengeance. He might have believed he was _saving_ Harry.

Bill gripped Harry's shoulder, hard enough to leave a bruise, and pulled the boy closer, so that he had to stand on his tiptoes. With their noses inches from each other, he muttered: "I'm not letting anybody take you away unless you want to go, understood?"

Though he was most likely in pain, Harry beamed.

x

With roughly twenty minutes until their portkey activated, Arthur offered to buy everyone ice-cream. Bill declined and Harry hadn't considered himself invited. Charlie volunteered to watch their baggage so that Molly could go. He didn't do much watching, though (not that it was necessary – it wasn't worth the risk of stealing in a hotel the administration of which had ties to Gringotts), rather spied out a while when Harry was occupied elsewhere, doing Ra knows what, and shuffled closed to Bill.

"He'll break you one day," Charlie hissed. "And I'll cheer for him."

Unconcerned, Bill flicked a bit of sand from under his nail. "I'm not breakable by anything except perhaps extreme torture."

"I can see you driving him that far," Charlie went on, more antagonistic than Bill had ever experienced him. "Well, I'd say good luck, but you don't believe in luck… Bye, then."

Bill glanced at his brother's back. Oddly enough, he had never stopped thinking of Charlie as someone he could trust, but it was rapidly becoming clear that Charlie had, in the end, subscribed to the two-dimensional Arthur-Weasley-type of worldview.

x

Molly herded her children together, Percival kept anal-retentively rearranging the trunks and suitcases and Arthur was, as usually, rounding out the numbers and doing little useful.

Off to the side, a conversation was happening between Charlie and Harry that was too covert to be inconspicuous. Bill let his mother prattle at him and tuned in to the boys' chat. Seeing Harry get the better of someone rarely failed to lift his mood.

"Look, Harry," Charlie was saying, quiet and pensive, "I realise you probably don't want to hear this, but if you decide that you don't want to live with Bill – for whatever reason – you wouldn't go back to the Dursleys. Maybe you could stay with our parents, or we would find somewhere… and you could go to Hogwarts. Don't you want to go to Hogwarts?"

Harry remained unimpressed. "Not particularly. Sir considered it, as well as some other magical schools, but I truly learn the most interesting things here."

Bill had to suppress a chuckle. Egypt, especially a site crawling with curse-breakers, was the ideal learning environment for someone of Harry's countenance.

"What about other subjects?" Charlie insisted. All of his hard-headedness – and there was a considerable lot of it, since he and Bill shared some genes – went into convincing Harry that Bill was bad for him. He might as well have tried to convince a rock to move out of the river's way.

Harry said nothing.

"Transfiguration? Potions?" By the note of helplessness in his voice it was obvious that Charlie finally realised that he had no chance. His shoulders slumped, and he gained a defeated look. Bill supposed it might have been genuine, too – although even genuine self-recrimination wouldn't move Harry, especially to do something as absurd as leaving his life behind for a promise of coddling.

"I do not lack for education, Charles," Harry said and pulled out his wand.

What he did with it Bill didn't witness, because Molly practically jumped on him and bent his ribs inwards. She planted a smacking kiss on Bill's cheek and he dearly wished there was a way he could extricate himself out of this uncomfortable situation without offending anyone.

"How I will miss you!" the woman tearfully exclaimed, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief.

"Will you at least think about it?" Charlie asked somewhere in the background.

Bill leaned in to pat his mother on the back, to have a clear view over her shoulder when Harry, with expressionless façade that betrayed nothing of his feelings, replied: "I will think about it."

x

After the Weasleys left the day was shot to Hell anyway, so Bill went and met the new administrator. The man didn't resemble his predecessor, but in mannerism he might as well have been a clone of Jackson back when he had been healthy. The important difference was that Bill had ingratiated Sydney Carter a week before the man had set foot to the excavation site.

Bill knew how to make Carter feel indebted and Carter knew exactly which papers Bill should fill in and whose signature on them would get him what he wanted. After three weeks of surviving in atmosphere saturated by his family's cheerful straightforwardness and lamentable sincerity, Bill felt good… until he came back to barracks and found Harry gone.

For an irrational second he thought that Charlie had taken him, that Harry had been abducted and hidden somewhere in Britain – or even that Harry had gone on his own volition… Then he realised that Harry vanished on his own all too frequently and never bothered to inform Bill, so he was most likely by the well with the other kids, or at what passed for school, bothering centenarian teachers.

Surely enough, Harry turned up just after sundown, surly and taciturn. Bill stubbornly ignored the quizzical glances the boy sent him and concentrated on his beer-bottle; he held out until Harry returned from the communal showers, wet and dripping and goose-bumped in the chill of the evening.

He dove under the covers of his bed and closed his eyes, but the frown didn't disappear.

"Not talking to me?" Bill mocked, because the silent treatment was truly too childish a way to deal with whatever was going on. It would have been far more prudent of Harry to come out and say what crawled up his ass and died-

"I am," the boy mumbled.

"Then you can look at me, while you're talking to me," Bill hissed and, to his mild surprise, Harry obeyed, even though it was a kind of bleary glare that he sent Bill's way.

"Leave me alone. I want to think."

Bill set his bottle on the window-sill, got up and threw the nearest not easily breakable object – predictably, a book – into the corner. He paced the length of the room (measly nine feet) twice, because he was afraid that all his enraged energy would make him strike out at Harry. Eventually, he came to a halt and, more or less composed, asked: "What's your problem?!"

Harry mumbled something, and Bill made a big show of waiting, complete with crossed arms, lifted eyebrows and a tapping foot. The boy seemed to burrow deeper into the covers, preemptively hiding.

Then he steeled himself, sat up, and spoke: "Charles is nice…"

"_Charles is nice_…" Bill mocked in a high-pitched voice. Harry kept staring at him like he expected him to understand something deep and meaningful. Most bloody people you met on the street were basically 'nice', and Charlie did have a mile-wide nasty streak. "As opposed to me, right? I'm _not_ nice."

Harry squared his shoulders and backed away to the wall, coolly anticipating that he would be manhandled in response to his statement, but his eyes didn't stray from Bill's when he said: "No. You're not nice."

The admission perplexed Bill to the point that he just threw his head back and laughed.

"I don't like nice people," Harry said in such a small voice that Bill almost didn't catch it over his own hilarity. "I never know what they want from me."

Bill tossed back the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth with his sleeve – an action that caused Harry to scowl though, fortunately, the boy chose not to run off at the mouth. He had been trained well… even if Bill was liable to break the muggles' arms for treating a kid like they had done, he wasn't going to discount all the good things they managed to instill into Harry… and there was quite a few of them. Like this apparent distrust of 'nice' people. It was decidedly clever. If ever Harry went to Hogwarts (which Bill didn't expect to happen), he would be a Slytherin.

"You wouldn't have left your relatives if I hadn't insulted you, would you?"

"Prob'ly not," Harry replied. He was such an odd child – quirky. Messed up in the head, most definitely, but Bill could in hindsight see how it had grown on him, most especially as Harry was quiet, generally undemanding and perfectly capable of amusing himself alone. Most of the things that Bill hated in children were absent in him – except for trace amounts of childishness and naivety, but those meant that what was left of the child inside Harry was salvageable and Bill, with a lot of internal grumbling an reproaches, would just deal with it like a responsible adult.

And, thank Merlin, none of that had anything to do with love.

x

A week later they were assigned an apartment in one of the four-storey concrete buildings and, after they moved all their things, Bill was very much in the mood to celebrate. It was just after midnight when Harry finished cleaning and Bill finished reweaving the ward against pests that the previous occupant needn't even had on for all the good it had done him.

"I'm going out. I'll probably be a while," Bill said, fishing around in his chest – they had a _closet_ now, but there hadn't been enough time to unpack everything – for something to wear.

"You don't need to primp up. I'm sure you'll get some, sir," Harry replied with a smile that truly didn't belong on a thirteen-year-old's face.

Bill gave him a look, but Harry misinterpreted it.

"Yeah, right. Like you're not going to get a pint and chat up some unsuspecting blonde," the boy scoffed and Levitated his own, smaller, chest in front of the closet.

Bill couldn't quite believe the child still had enough energy to continue working, but as long as Harry would be able to get up next day and go to school, he saw no reason to lecture. Instead, he focused on the implied reproach. "And?"

"And I don't see why you think you have to lie to me about it," Harry replied with almost the correct amount of indignation, but not exactly. There was something off, like Bill lying to him pissed him off, but at the same time there was something worse happening, something that Harry felt he had a reason to lie to Bill about.

"Why do you think _you_ have to lie to _me_?"

Harry gave him the kind of look a deer might give to a hungry dragon. "'cause if you could see into my head, you'd hurt me more effectively whenever the mood struck you." Then the boy crouched down and started rifling through his possessions.

Stunned, Bill fished for a response to that. He couldn't refute it – there had been instances in the past when Harry took the brunt of his anger, and when Bill was angry he knew how to lash out, how to hurt, how to hit somebody's weak points, and Harry's closeness made him both the most available and the most vulnerable target. Having it pointed out like this…

Harry straightened and looked over his shoulders at the Bill-statue. "Go hunt or something, sir. I can take care of myself."


	7. Book 3: Condition

Book Three: Confusion of the Inverse

x

Chapter One: Condition

x

Harry had put on a bit of flesh since he had started cooking for them, but he was still small enough for Bill's brain to automatically categorise him as a child.

Their apartment was tiny but more than sufficient, since they hardly spent any time there anyway. Bill kind of wished Harry could have had his own room, but he only truly required privacy on the nights when he had company, and he could easily afford a room in a tavern once in a while. He was a little surprised that he had never happened upon Harry _in flagrante_, since Harry had reached an age when that definitely should have become an issue, but when asked, Harry informed him that he had saved enough money to be able to take his company elsewhere as well. It was said with a kind of hateful sneer that Bill suspected _wasn't_ directed at the inanity of his query, so he refrained from asking again.

Still, it was most unusual of Harry to drag his body into the apartment at half past three _ante meridian_, looking disheveled and bright-eyed and smelling of something nauseatingly sweet.

Bill threw back the rest of the wine in his tumbler and glared.

"I didn't think you were here tonight…" Harry muttered, far from sheepish. Once he realised that Bill was, in fact, drinking – drinking _alone_ – he paused to think. "No," he shook his head eventually, "still don't get it. It's Friday. You should have been cruising the bars for an anorectic blonde…"

Disconcerting as it was for Harry to know his taste despite never having met one of his contests, Bill decided not to ask. He even ignored the exaggerated description. "Where have you been?"

"Celebrating," Harry replied easily. He pulled off his tunic and thrust it onto his chair.

With the smell close enough to his nose that it didn't get mixed with the wine's scent, Bill finally identified it as one of those fruit-flavoured tobaccos they used in hookah bars. Celebrating, indeed.

"What have _you_ been doing, sir?" the boy asked in return, flopping down on his bed.

"_Celebrating_," Bill replied, trying for irony, but coming up flat. He liked to think it was due to the wine. "Don't you go to sleep, brat! Go grab a shower – you stink like you've been bathing in a fruit salad."

Harry laughed. For a moment Bill simply listened, mesmerised. He hadn't heard Harry laugh like that… well, ever. It was brought on by the high, he knew, but even so it was very much out of character for Harry, and Bill's reaction to it worried him. He liked Harry the way he had molded him; he didn't want the boy to suddenly change into something uncontrollable.

"Hit me with a Cleaning Charm if you're so queasy," Harry snapped out. "Not like I don't have to put up with whatever state you're in when you get back."

So lazy and rude, Bill thought, looking at the sulky teenager. If anyone knew what the Boy Who Lived grew up into… but the scoundrel knew how to charm people at the drop of a hat, how to lie and act with the best of them. No one but Bill ever saw this side of him.

"Changed your mind?" Harry spoke up, irritated. He was stretched out on his bed, boneless, but the stimulating effects of the shisha wouldn't let him go to sleep.

"Tergeo," Bill muttered. His wand was over on his bed and, to no one's surprise, the spell had no effect at all.

Harry chuckled at him, faintly mocking. "Pathetic, sir. Maybe you should lay off of the wine."

"Maybe you should do as you're told and go shower," Bill retorted.

"Time enough tomorrow. I'm having a glo-o-orious day…"

"So glad to be out of school?" Bill scoffed. Perhaps he should have sent Harry to a boarding school, just to keep him collared and leashed for a while longer. He was only fifteen – nowhere near old enough to be let free into the world. Unfortunately, real Egyptian life didn't agree with pansy English sensibilities.

"Well duh," Harry replied, smiling. "Finished school, got a job and tried out a water pipe all in one day… Great stuff, smoking…"

Bill blinked in surprise and decided he probably should go easier on the wine after all. "You got a job?" he asked hollowly. He had had plans – oh yes, he had planned Harry's immediate future… He thought that Harry loved the tombs, that he liked curse-breaking above all else, that he wanted to stay on the excavation site and dig up mummies…

"Syd' gave me internship. I prob'ly stole it from some half-baked Hogwarts graduate, but what the hell – I'm better at this stuff than any school-boy could be. Officially, I'm going to apprentice under somebody, but, really, I finally get to do the fun stuff."

Bill said nothing. He was trying to puzzle out why he felt as though a cold fist gripped his insides while he went to recover his wand and finally clean Harry off the sweet and sweaty smell.

x

"Carter…" Bill spoke calmly, pausing on the threshold of the office. He, frankly, disliked coming here – the curious mixture of wizarding and muggle implements made him uneasy – but forced himself to, every once in a while, carefully cultivating the acquaintance.

Sydney Carter, looking not a day over thirty-five (though Bill knew him to be a decade older than that), blonde and a bit of a shirt-lifter, if the rumours were to be believed (which Bill knew they were), was perfectly suited for a mid-level bureaucratic post and the kind of back-yard politicking that went on around there. He was also fairly dependable; right now, he was sitting behind his desk where he should be and copying a text from a glowing screen onto parchment.

"Carter!" Bill said louder.

The man lifted his head, surprised, and pulled little black pieces on strings from his ears. Bill could hear distant music.

"Weasley! Come in!" he exclaimed and gestured to the chair in front of his desk, kind of like Dumbledore would back when Bill was the Head Boy. "I haven't expected you today."

Bill didn't sit down as he was bidden to – as he usually would. Carter was smart enough to notice.

"Has something happened?" he asked, his smile fading out.

Bill took his time to reply, watching Carter's nervousness grow second by second. Eventually, he said: "Harry told me you offered him a job."

Carter, relieved, breathed out noisily. "Yes… yes, I did," he replied, looking down at his papers with a hint of embarrassment.

Bill could tell, with certainty, that Sydney Carter was not a 'bad' man, and though he wasn't exactly pure as snow, he had no intention to harm anyone, much less someone Bill might be concerned about.

"Apparently, you do not require my input," Bill stated.

Carter looked up, eyes imploring Bill to cease the fruitless interrogation and just accept what was happening. "He's graduated, Weasley. In a week he will be sixteen – able to have a job by Egyptian law."

"He still requires my consent," Bill pointed out.

Carter scoffed, self-deprecating. "Like you could refuse him anything either. That boy could talk a man into killing his own mother for a broken knut."

It was obvious that Carter had tried to refuse Harry, or at least reason with him, but was unsuccessful. Bill didn't know whether to be angry at or proud of the brat, and ended with a headache-inducing combination of the two.

"I want him assigned to me," Bill said, offering no room for compromise.

Carter nodded. "I planned on it anyway."

Bill managed to hold back an acidic remark and forced himself to utter a terse 'see you later, then', before he made himself scarce, pretending he didn't see the demure look Carter was throwing his way.

x

"You had me assigned to you," Harry said a little too shyly. Bill realised the boy was surprised, and couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

"What did you expect?"

Harry put the spoon he was holding into the sink, turned around and leaned against the counter. His hands were wrinkled from water and adorned with bubbles. Bill couldn't understand why the boy insisted on washing the dishes manually, but after three twenty-minute-long debates on the topic he resigned himself to the bewilderment.

"I thought you were going to forbid it."

Bill scoffed. "And what would I have you do all day long? Stew in here?" If he allowed Harry to do nothing, the entire Sahara would likely go the way of Atlantis within weeks… metaphorically speaking. Bill couldn't begin to guess what Harry's long-term goals were, and Harry had repeatedly refused to tell him, so the only way he could keep their lives safe for the time being was not allow Harry enough room to go about realising his plans.

"I don't know," Harry replied, looking at his hands. He wiped them into his trousers, though it did little good; a tunic would have absorbed the wetness better, had he been wearing one. "Last time I wanted to work, you forbade it."

"Last time you wanted to drop out of school," Bill reminded him dryly. They had never been as tight for money as to necessitate neglecting Harry's education. Still, Bill wasn't very happy about Harry's levels of proficiency – there had been a sliver of truth in Charlie's worries. Harry had only rudimentary knowledge of Transfiguration and intermediate of Potions. He was beyond N.E.W.T. level in Runes, Arithmancy, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms, and had a rounded basis in Dark Arts themselves. What he knew of History, Herbology and Thaumazoology extended to locally relevant information. All in all, he was prepared for the job of a curse-breaker, but there was much he could still learn-

"So, what are we working on?" Harry interrupted Bill's rumination, sounding eager. "Mummies? Cows? Cats? Ibises? _Alligators_?"

Bill laughed at the enthusiasm. "Apophis' temple, actually. Should be right up your alley. Lots and lots of snake-decorations."

"Something to talk to?" Harry asked, turning back to continue his momentarily abandoned rinsing.

"Your kind of friends."

This time Harry didn't laugh. Bill dearly wished he could see the boy's expression. However, these days Harry knew all too well how to maintain his inscrutability.

x

Harry walked down the stone-laid path to the vale, shoulder to shoulder with Haidar.

Haidar was one of the very few natives that Bill had learnt to distinguish, for a multitude of reasons: the boy was just a couple of months older than Harry, one of Harry's closest 'acquaintances' (Bill had effectively taught his charge to not believe in friendship), one of the few people whose opinions held some weight with Harry and also the kind of person Bill feared would be able to twist Harry into something far more dangerous than he already was.

"Honestly, how did you do it?" the Arab asked in accented English, laughing.

Harry shook his head and threw a brief glance over his shoulder at Bill. "I just asked," he replied. "I think Syd' wanted you to have the job, anyway. No outsiders this year…" He sounded amused, but there was rigidness in his posture that Bill associated with play-acting.

"Just imagine it! The two of us, working together in a temple! Amazing!" Haidar tried to walk a little closer to Harry, but Harry deftly side-stepped the impending brush of their arms. He had his work cut out: Haidar obviously never got over his childish adoration of Harry, and Harry was trying to hold the boy off and at the same time keep the unthinking loyalty.

"I worry when you say things like that," Harry asserted seriously. "You treat it like some kind of adventure. But-"

"I know, I know!" Haidar waved him off. "If I get careless, I could die… like you would let me."

Harry was saved from replying, because at the moment the half-uncovered entrance to the temple came into view. The two boys halted and Bill came up behind Harry.

"In two weeks in will be fully accessible," Bill explained unnecessarily. He just felt like saying something, to disturb the dialogue between the teenagers. "Rentrock estimates it to go all the way to the other side of the hill. It will take months and months to clean out."

"Bring it on!" Haidar cheered.

Harry remained silent, only gave his former school-mate a look.

Statistically, twenty percent of curse-breakers didn't survive their first month on the job. Judging by Haidar's reactions, the boy fell into that fifth. He must have had the skill (Carter wasn't stupid enough to admit someone incompetent), but he absolutely lacked the correct temperament.

"At least I won't get bored with all the snakes to keep me company," Harry muttered, and there was a bite in his words, like he was trying to inform the world of his displeasure.

Bill laughed and got a mouthful of sand when the wind picked up precisely at that unfortunate moment.

x

Harry was more skilled than Bill had been eight years ago, when he had started with curse-breaking, but Bill was becoming increasingly edgier – the same namely couldn't be said about Haidar. At first the young Arab wanted to work in tandem with Harry, but they were woefully unmatched, and after Haidar sprung a trap and it took the combined forces of Harry, Bill and Devant (the unfortunate to whom Haidar was assigned) to save their lives, Harry maintained that he was better at working independently.

Which, incidentally, was true.

Devant had done his best to be encouraging, even though the result was stiff and half-hearted, but Haidar continued to make rash mistakes and Devant, the self-preserving son of a bitch that he was, moved further and further on the off chance that he would find himself outside of the radius when the boy finally blew himself up.

It came to head suddenly.

They had cleaned the entrance itself and the floor and ceiling of the entrance hall with yet another mishap on Haidar's part, which he didn't pay for with his life thanks to Harry only. After profuse apologies and promises of a Life Debt, the kid went and did it again.

Stone scraped against stone and Bill coiled himself to spring, when something shot out of the wall and twisted in the sand-filled bed of an ancient snake-pit. It easily avoided three curses sent at it and lunged in the air when Harry hissed.

The hiss echoed from the walls and the attacking serpent landed between Harry's boots and lifted its head.

What followed was one of the most eerie experiences in Bill's life: a conversation between a beautiful rikhal and Harry, who seemed at first fearful, then surprised, and finally downright thunderstruck. He didn't relay what they were speaking of, only gestured to the exit and lead them out, without uttering a word.

Even in the sun, in the height of the day, he shivered, pale and seemingly lost.

Bill could distinctly remember the last time when he had felt like killing someone this much: the time he had murdered Marcella Blatt. He waited just until they returned to the apartment before he allowed his rage to surface. He slammed the door behind them and flung his water-bag across the room into the opposite wall.

"That was it!" he yelled.

Harry passed by him without a hint of acknowledgment. He untied and shed his shoes and stuck his head under the faucet, letting the cold water drench him.

"I'm going to Carter and having the idiot removed right now."

Harry didn't react, only stopped the water and let drops from his hair splatter onto the floor.

"He almost killed us for the third time today!" Bill continued raging, wishing for _any_ kind of response from Harry, but it seemed like the boy was still in shock. "He can't do his job and he's disrupting _our_ concentration-"

Harry mumbled something and Bill immediately fell silent so that he could hear. It was too late. He stalked into the kitchen, unmindful of his shoes, and gripped Harry's jaw to force him to look upwards. He was most likely going to leave a bruise, but Harry must have become used to it a long time ago. He never complained anyway, and he knew Bill didn't do it to hurt him.

"What was that?" he asked, trying to be as calm as he could. It didn't work too well, but Harry wasn't intimidated by his moods.

"I said 'it obeyed me'. The snake obeyed me. It said I was now the master of the temple – the High Priest."

Bill wanted to say something, but he couldn't think of anything that wasn't a curse of some kind. His silence obviously disappointed Harry, and Bill's releasing him didn't help at all.

"Go talk to Syd', sir. You're right," the boy whispered and slunk past Bill back to the hall and from there into the bedroom. He shut himself inside and activated the Privacy wards.

Bill went to Carter to clean up another of Harry's messes.

x

"It is true! I saw it with my own eyes!" a boy's voice exclaimed to a small congregation of Arabs.

The sun was setting and, as it was Friday, Bill was on his way to Alexandria for a couple of drinks and, should providence allow, a shag. He paused to hear what they were so excited about.

"He spoke with the snake! He communed with the guardians of the temple, and the Great Apophis' servants deemed him worthy!"

"I saw him! I saw him!" a female's voice cried with a sort of reverence that made a shiver go down Bill's spine. They could not have been talking about anyone but Harry, and that signified nothing good.

He approached, and the crowd accepted him among them.

In front of them, waving a reproduction of the Book of the Dead, stood Haidar, his eyes bright as though he had just exited a hookah bar, and preached. The simpletons disregarded that he was sixteen years old and hung onto his every word.

"He is the High Priest!" Haidar called, and a ripple went through the crowd, the words 'High Priest' repeated over and over. Some went as far as to invoke the name of Imhotep.

Bill had known for years that this boy was trouble. He might have finished school, and that fact earned him a completely undeserved level of respect from the uneducated masses, but he was still from the commons and would forever remain common.

Bill's hopes of a pleasant night flew out of the window, and he turned back on the way to their apartment, to warn Harry and prepare a contingency plan.

x

Harry closed his eyes against the sun and tried to suppress a sigh as the rikhal (and why on Earth did _rikhal_ guard a temple in _Egypt_?) slithered among the feet of the infants (without harming anyone) and came to meet them in the centre of the square.

Bill had to grit his teeth as everyone within earshot was treated to a hissed conversation. This was worse than Haidar going around and announcing Harry as the son of gods, possibly a god himself. Harry's saving grace was that there were so few who actually believed in the old Egyptian gods… and even that seemed to matter less and less, as the damned cobra emerged at Harry's side at the most inopportune of times. Muslims and atheists left and right began to doubt and consider.

"Mercy, my Lord!" a woman cried. Bent at the waist, she approached and set a bowl of milk in front of the snake. Harry, exasperated, bade it to drink, and the female nearly went into religious convulsions when it obeyed.

"Bless my child, my Lord!" another woman approached – with a huddle of followers, each of them with a toddler in their arms.

Harry's eyes widened and he looked around himself, searching for an escape route. Bill stepped up behind him and whispered: "I'll let you disappear. Grab the snake."

Harry hissed and the rikhal flung itself on him. Bill cast a charm related to the Disillusionment, but a tad more complex – and more effective. Leaving behind footsteps, but otherwise pretty much invisible, Harry practically ran away.

x

Carter accepted Bill's request at face value and suspended Haidar. The unfortunate side-effect was that the boy had more time to spend preaching, first in the square, then in the adjacent villages, and eventually at street-corners of Alexandria. The budding hysteria was picking up, and it didn't surprise Bill in the least when he returned to the apartment in the early morning on Saturday and found Harry drunk on his wine and slurring hisses (which made for a very peculiar sound-effect) to his serpent.

On Monday morning they walked to the temple in silence, both Disillusioned. Bill was seriously beginning to worry – if the cult spread wider, they would have to relocate… and Harry had fallen into a depressed silence and hardly mumbled a word in the past thirty-six hours.

Harry stepped aside and let him enter first, and Bill reconsidered yet again whether it was a good idea to let Harry work in his present mental state. The kid wasn't weak, or easily susceptible to pressure, but everyone had a breaking point (save, perhaps, Bill himself), and Harry seemed like he was nearing his. Lost in thoughts, Bill tripped over something that definitely hadn't been lying on the stairs two days ago. Harry caught his elbow.

"Lumos," Bill whispered and looked. He didn't even have the courtesy of thinking it a pile of clothes for a second, because there was a grey, open face staring up at him. He crouched down and stretched out his hand. The skin was already completely cool, and he didn't have to guess what happened to Haidar or what drove Harry to drinking.

And he was so proud.

x

The story, fantastic as it was, made some kind of international newspaper. Names had been omitted, but apparently there was a picture, and things just snowballed.

Within days, Bill received an owl from his parents. He had egged Harry into a game of poker that neither of them was particularly enjoying, but Bill felt an odd desire to spend time with the boy now, while he still had a chance, because everything suggested that their life as they were used to it was going to Hell.

They were sitting at the kitchen table, with the window open and charmed to not let sand through, when Hermes set down on the sill and stuck out his leg. Exasperated, Bill threw down his cards and accepted the knife Harry handed him. Hermes took off as soon as the letter was removed, and Harry dejectedly hid his face in his hands while Bill read.

It was an invitation addressed to 'Bill and Harry'. The contents were hardly alarming, but there was a post scriptum written in unfamiliar, cursive hand-writing.

I have a grievous matter to consult with Harry, Mr Septimus.

"Son of a bitch," Bill said weakly.

Harry pulled the parchment out of Bill's hand and skimmed it. His first, milky-white lids shut and he seemed blind, but Bill was certain that he _was_ seeing something.

"That's… definitive," Harry opined and returned the letter to Bill. "There isn't a way out of meeting them, I suppose?"

Bill knew that the deception had been uncovered and unless he consented and brought Harry to Dumbledore, the headmaster and his flunkies wouldn't hesitate to take him by force. He felt violated, but he had been the one to do the initial violation, foolishly playing with fire that just now noticed him and benignly threatened to consume him.

"We're going to Britain, Harry. Both of us this time."

Harry nodded and Summoned a bottle of wine. He took a swig straight from it, ignoring Bill's glare. "But we'll come back, right?"

Bill said nothing. He stared at the parchment, at the elegant writing he had no doubt belonged to Albus Dumbledore, and contemplated. Come back? They might let him go. He wasn't so important. But Harry?

"We'll come back, right?!" Harry raised his voice.

When Bill still didn't react, he got up from his seat and, wobbly, came over to the other side of the table. He gripped Bill's shoulders and tried to shake him; when that didn't work, he pulled on Bill's hair.

Bill retaliated swiftly, angrily, almost breaking Harry's hand in the process.

"Do you want me to lie to you?!" he shouted.

Harry froze. For a while he remained like that, with his wrists in Bill's grasp, and then he pulled away. Bill let him go.

A moment later the front door clicked close and Bill remained alone. He reached for the bottle of wine and, figuring that the hate he felt couldn't grow further, drank.


	8. Book 3: Reciprocation

A/N: Hello! I'm busy, busy, busy with learning for exams, so I'll be quick: thanks for your continued support! Keep it up! Enjoy the long-anticipated journey back to Britain! Dumbledore in the next chapter!  
Wish me luck with my exams (going to need it…)!  
Brynn

x

Book Three: Confusion of the Inverse

x

Chapter Two: Reciprocation

x

There wasn't a time set in the invitation, but Bill knew they couldn't push it, lest Dumbledore would come after them.

He started preparing for a lengthy leave of absence. Carter couldn't understand why, and Bill wasn't inclined to inform the man of Harry's true identity, so the whole process became more and more complicated. As if that wasn't bad enough, he had to deal with Harry's depression, and his patience was rapidly running short.

He was filling out yet another of a stack of forms, when somebody knocked on the door. That, in itself, was an unusual occasion, and he was inclined to ignore it, but when the visitor wouldn't be dissuaded after five minutes of knocking, he got up and went to get the door.

"Carter," he said coolly.

The man attempted to read in Bill's face. Shockingly, he must have gotten something, because he nodded. "Harry asked me to teach him to Apparate," he said.

Bill couldn't care less. What Harry was doing didn't bother him, as long as the boy wasn't endangering his life. Carter, however, was waiting for a reaction, and Bill could only muster some leftover resentment from the last time Harry went asking Carter for something.

"And you want my permission?" he asked tonelessly. "Suddenly?"

Carter sighed and looked at his shoes. They hardly warranted that amount of interest, but it was better than him gazing at Bill imploringly. "I thought you might want to be the one to teach him," he admitted.

Bill shook his head and let out a mirthless chuckle. "If he doesn't want me to teach him-"

"I think he does," Carter protested, once again begging with his eyes like a sodding puppy. "He just believes you would refuse him." _Once again_ his gaze faltered and he found an interesting point on the wall. "Seems kind of brokenhearted."

"That's working off the assumption that he's got a heart," Bill drawled, and felt a spark of satisfaction when Carter gaped at him, appalled. "Fine, I'll ask him about it. But feel free to do whatever he asks of you. It's not like you wouldn't have done it anyway."

Carter paled further and Bill repeated the sentence to himself, trying to find what was so horrifying about it. He couldn't come up with anything; Carter had to have had a fairly unordinary association.

"Harry… Harry _has_ got a heart-"

"Then he can pour it out to you," Bill retorted.

Carter went yet whiter, outstripping the wall in lightness of colour. He nodded curtly and shot Bill a hard, _angry_ look, before he spun on his heel and stalked out.

Frustrated, Bill slammed the door behind him.

x

Bill got a shock later in the afternoon – at night, actually, if he had been keeping any semblance of regular hours.

Harry came in, quiet and subdued, and remained standing at what could be misconstrued as respectful distance. He had bruises like bracelets, marks of Bill's less than gentle handling. He spent a good minute bracing himself, before he asked, with a relatively dignified pose: "You _would_ be willing to teach me to Apparate?" His voice carried a kind of stupefied curiosity that was very much out of character for him.

"Have you not figured out how to do it yet?" Bill countered. He suspected there would be little to no work involved, apart from half an hour of supervision.

Harry paused, then nodded and uttered a faint 'ah' of belated comprehension. A sardonic smile stretched his lips and he fished in the closet and pulled on his bisht, like it was a special occasion.

"Well, then, _sir_…" The address was mocking. "If you would be willing to test my proficiency…"

Bill stood and went. He felt like he was reaching out into pitch-black where he _knew_ something was, and his hands went through thin air. Harry's eyes never quite met his anymore; they could be staring one another into the face, and there was never a _connection_.

x

Three days ago Bill had declared Harry adequate at Apparating, and Harry had vanished in front of him.

Bill had not begun to truly fear never seeing the boy again until yesterday. He had spent the night imbibing and the morning fighting through a headache while he compiled all the material to be turned over to their successors at the temple. Gringotts was bringing in a rookie from one of the little Slavic countries in Eastern Europe, and Bill hated abandoning his work to somebody else, somebody who was most likely going to mess it up anyway…

He didn't know what he was going to do if Harry didn't turn up. He wasn't even sure what he was going to do if Harry _did_ turn up, and he felt irrationality looming over him and threatening to overtake sense. He feared he was going to grab Harry and flee… run and not look back, hide somewhere in a forgotten corner of the world. He didn't want to do that, but the impetus existed somewhere within him and that terrified him.

When he heard the door open Bill was on his feet and in the hall before he realised he had moved. Harry stood in the centre of the room, indecisive, with bangs shielding his expression.

Bill had never yearned to feel someone like this. He wanted to pull Harry against him, to assure himself that the boy was still there, that he was real, not just an apparition that was going to evaporate at the first touch of a sunray. He didn't know why he remained standing, why he didn't walk forth and hug the boy. They had lived together for eight years. _Eight_ bloody years. Half of Harry's life – almost a third of his own.

Why the Hell could they not share something so simple?

Then Harry looked up and his eyes slid over Bill's face, never _connecting_, and Bill recovered his sanity. Harry was just a child, one that wasn't even related to him, and he didn't have to care.

"You promised, sir," Harry whinged. "You said you would not let anybody take me away unless I wanted it."

Bill's compressed desperation exploded. "I'm not _letting_ anybody do anything! Against them, I'm powerless!"

"That's not what it looks like from my point of view," Harry protested. He wrapped his arms around himself as if he was cold, while Bill sweated even in his state of half-undress.

"If you're so smart, why don't you take yourself away?" Bill suggested. Something cold and dark inside him, born in the past few days, grew at the thought, and still he wished Harry would disappear and spare him the decision even as he wished Dumbledore would choke on a lemon drop and die and leave them the fuck alone. "You're almost adult and you've been self-sufficient for years! Go! Run!"

"To what end?" Harry yelled back, red in the face but, luckily, not as far gone as to start snivelling. "There's nothing waiting for me out there."

Bullshit, Bill thought. Half of the world waited for Harry Potter to spring up from under his rock so that they could canonise him. He would have masses at his beck and call, a playground the size of an entire country or few, more political power and wealth than he would know what to do with…

"You could finalise the contract," Harry said suddenly, and just like that Bill's vexation changed into outright contempt.

He sneered. "I'm not going to marry you. The mere idea… preposterous."

"But it wasn't so preposterous to arrange a betrothal contract-"

"I did it to help you!" Bill exclaimed. The nerve of the brat! Bill had risked his future to save the little idiot from abusive relatives and had he ever heard a word of thanks for it? No!

Harry sneered back at him and his voice dropped, both in pitch and temperature, as he said: "Nobody asked you to."

x

Harry looked like he was walking down the plank as they exited their apartment. He kept a cautious distance from Bill, up until they went to say 'goodbye' to Carter – more like, went to inform him of their departure.

Carter waited for them on the threshold (Bill didn't mind one bit that they didn't have to actually enter), and for all the world looked like he had just wiped off tear-tracks. He was distinctly colder to Bill than to Harry, and Harry found a chance to exercise his cynicism by announcing: "_Morituri te salutant_!" just before the portkey took them away.

They touched down in the backyard of the Burrow, in front of seven Weasleys (Arthur was missing, presumably at work), who were standing in line, waiting for them.

Bill suppressed a sneer and spoke: "Harry, this is my family. Family, this is Harry Potter."

"Harry _Potter_?! My word!" Molly cried, as though she hadn't known. "William Septimus Weasley! What have you done? You – you kidnapped a child! When your father hears… When the Ministry… and they… oh, Merlin. Merlin!"

Harry smiled, and made it look completely natural, until he opened his mouth. "Hello, Charles. Hello, rest of the family," he said tonelessly, and turned to Bill to ask: "Where can I put my shit?" He was obviously going for the shock factor, maybe trying to bring about the heart attack Molly looked like she was going to have, because he normally wasn't that vulgar.

"Hello, Harry," Charlie replied politely, but he didn't seem at all happy to see them.

"Are you really _the_ Harry Potter?" Ginevra asked, eyes wide and sparkling like she hadn't matured a day since she was ten and so in love with the Boy Who Lived that she wanted to go to Hogwarts as 'Ginny Potter'… which _did_ have a potential to be funny.

"_The_ Harry Potter and opposed to _a_ Harry Potter?" Harry counter-questioned. He sounded benign, just like Dumbledore sounded benign when offering lemon drops just before he informed you that you had to give up your life for the 'greater good'. Once he had the attention of everybody gathered, the boy finished: "In that case, I would have to say I am _a_ Harry Potter, because I have no idea whatsoever which Harry Potter you mean."

Ginevra looked befuddled for a moment, and then crushed, as though the Prince Charming had taken off his helmet and revealed himself to be a regular ogre.

Ronald puffed up and flushed, like a long, long, disproportionate tomato ripening, and started in on Harry: "You don't have to be an arse to her-"

"Ronald!" Molly roused herself just enough to scold her youngest son.

Harry's smile never faltered as he looked around himself, at the grass-covered hills, the copses of trees, the distant red-tiled roofs of Ottery St Catchpole and, finally, at the mournful structure of the Burrow itself. "I see this visit is going to be simply delightful. Why, I can imagine myself skipping through the fields with the pretty ingénue and playing gobstones with her spitfire protector of a brother. We'll all be one big happy family."

Molly seemed to have filtered the speech, concentrating on keeping the twins in line (only figuratively, because literally the line had been a lost cause the moment Ronald blew up).

Charlie groaned and hid his face in his hands. "Merlin have mercy on us, Bill. He's your second coming.

Molly huffed when Bill burst into laugh and scolded both of them: "Tosh! He is such a delightful young man. They ought to become fast friends."

Bill shook his head, amused enough to show it despite his dark mood. "This I have to see!"

x

Arthur returned from work and spoke with Harry before Bill noticed. They came down together for dinner, Arthur looking unusually sombre.

"Are you certain this is the correct approach?" the man asked, with his brows scrunched up together, making him look like he had stomachache.

Harry shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know the man and he has no right to me. He disrupted my life as much as the Dark Lord did, and in no less damaging way. Frankly, I'm not in the mood to get on my knees and lick the ground beneath his feet."

Bill scowled; apparently Harry insisted on continuing to show off his coarse side. Perplexingly, Arthur seemed appreciative.

"B-but…" Molly nervously wringed her apron, "he is the Headmaster of Hogwarts! The Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot-"

"Lady, he can be Merlin himself, for all I care," Harry cut her off. He did his best to keep his tone even, and managed not to offend Bill's mother, which was a success in and of itself, given the topic of the discussion. "I came this far for his convenience. It's him who wants to meet with me. The least he can do is come here. I am comfortable right now – though I would have been far more comfortable at home."

"B-but…" Molly grappled for words.

Ronald and Ginevra bounded down the stairs, followed by Percival at a more sedate pace. They squeezed on the bench next to Bill.

Harry surveyed the table. He considered it with a frown and turned to gaze out of the window at the Pennines in the distance. "I'm not feeling blessed because I hold his attention for a while. I would have been happier without it."

"You can use Errol if you like, but maybe it would be better to wait for Hermes," Arthur offered.

Harry gave him a smile – one that, as far as Bill could tell, was true. "I can get me an owl."

Unexpectedly, Bill was gripped by jealousy. He bit his tongue as he watched Harry exit and tuned out his mother, who went on and on about how little 'that poor boy' was eating and how he was going to 'waste away'. In the end, nobody listened to her, because they all watched Harry walk into the centre of the yard, pull on a leather glove and lift a caller to his mouth.

x

The letter to Dumbledore had been sent off, Ron and Ginny were manhandled into their beds and Molly unsuccessfully tried to do the same with Harry, who summarily locked her out of his – well, the twins' unused – bedroom. Bill had been half-expecting him to change his mind at the last minute and escape, which was the reason why he had kept his window open and the lawn rigged.

He had not expected Harry to sneak out to talk to Charlie…

…although, by the sound of it, neither had Harry.

"Running?" Charlie asked coolly.

Harry scoffed. "There's no other end of the rainbow for me out there, Charles. Why do you think the old man called me back to Britain? They're going to make me fight for them – for people I don't know, people I don't care about."

Bill wished it was him Harry was saying this to. It should have been him. He had deserved it.

"Surely not-"

"Don't be stupid," Harry interjected before Charlie could make a complete ass of himself. "Of course they are. You cannot expect consideration for me from people who have never met me. There is no such thing as selflessness. You only care for that which brings you profit… or happiness."

"And what brings you happiness?" Charlie inquired.

They were silent for a long time, and Bill knew that Harry wasn't going to answer. It was the kind of question Harry didn't answer.

It brought him a measure of self-satisfaction that he was right.

"I know what is out there," Harry said eventually. "Not exactly, of course, but it is enough to read a couple of books and listen to the story of my parents. Moreover, sir did not lie to me. He told me what to expect."

"You mean, he did not spare your feelings?" Charlie tried to twist Harry's statement to fit his own black-and-white worldview.

"Sir doesn't acknowledge feelings, not to speak about accommodating them," Harry replied. Bill could hear a smile in his voice – the sardonic kind, he imagined. "I thought about repaying him in kind, but at the moment I'm too apathetic. Good night, Charles." Then he turned up to Bill's window and added: "Good night, sir."

Bill, inexplicably, had the half-familiar feeling like someone stepped on his grave.


	9. Book 3: Equivocation

A/N: Hello! Still studying! If I wasn't crazy before, I am now. 'nyways, Dumbledore coming up. You go ahead and read, I'm on my way back to the textbooks…  
Brynn

x

Book Three: Confusion of the Inverse

x

Chapter Three: Equivocation

x

It was by unspoken agreement that Bill accompanied Harry to the kitchen when Albus Dumbledore knocked on the door and Molly all but squealed with joy at such a _venerable_ visit. The boy was still a minor, and legally Bill was still his guardian, so it was his right and obligation to be present for the discussion.

Bill entered the kitchen first, noting that the Headmaster hadn't changed in eight years; if anything, his taste in robes had slightly deteriorated.

"Harry, my boy!" Dumbledore exclaimed, beaming at Harry, who pretended with all the skill instilled into him by various good examples that he trusted Bill to take care of him. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes! I have been hoping to finally meet you-"

"Oh yes, do go on bullshitting me, old man," Harry said dispassionately, unamused by the Headmaster's obligatory song and dance.

Seeing Albus Dumbledore lost for words should have been a memorable occasion, but for some reason Bill just didn't feel the glee he had expected. The old man lowered his hands, and observed Harry closely, considering him. To Bill's surprise, Dumbledore had no immediate negative reaction to the colossal disrespect Harry had virtually slapped his face with, and Bill hated that. He would have wished to see a proof that the old wizard was, in fact, flappable. It didn't seem so.

"I apologise, Mr Potter," Dumbledore said eventually and wordlessly gestured Harry to take a seat. Harry did so. "I should have minded my manners, seeing as how you do not know me. I counted your parents among my friends and have thought of you continuously for the past years – I hope you can excuse an old man's sentimentality."

It was too heavy-handed a suggestion to work on Harry, Bill thought. He was proven correct, when Harry replied: "I have not left England until I was eight, sir. I find it hard to believe that my parents were your friends, yet you didn't care enough to visit their orphaned son once."

Dumbledore's countenance darkened: Harry had handed him just enough rope to hang himself. Bill enjoyed the situation immensely. He liked seeing Harry triumph, because it was himself who made it happen. Anything that Harry accomplished was, in a way, Bill's doing.

"You seem very intent on preventing an amicable relationship between us," the old man noted.

Harry shrugged. "You seem very intent on painting yourself as benevolent, while drafting me to fight a war not mine."

Dumbledore heaved a rumbling sigh and aged decades within seconds. "I wish it were not so…" he whispered and Bill almost believed him. Almost.

Hundred and twenty years was a very long time to learn to act convincingly.

"Your wishes do not help me, Mr Dumbledore," Harry informed the man dispassionately.

The Headmaster nodded and opened his valise, gesturing the boy to look in. "There is something that I must show you, Mr Potter. I hope it will help you gain a measure of insight, but, primarily, it is my duty. I am afraid, however, that I must ask Mr Weasley to step out for the duration. If you afterwards decide that you wish to share this with him then, by all means…"

Harry nodded.

Bill, stung, excused himself.

x

"You're feeling it already, aren't you?" Charlie asked, letting himself inside Bill's bedroom unbidden.

"I don't know what you're on about," Bill replied. None of what he might have been feeling was any of Charlie's business, anyway.

"The desperation. I told you he was going to break you."

Bill laughed. He felt frustration and helplessness, but not a hint of despair, and he wouldn't let something like loss of Harry – because that was what was happening to him and he wasn't about to try and fool himself – bring him low. Harry had been a project, his one good deed, and he had never intended to form any kind of attachment to it.

"How vindictive of you, Charlie," he said. "It would break your mother's heart if she heard you wish pain upon me."

He stood and uncompromisingly shoved Charlie out of his room. It wasn't as easy as it used to be – Romania and dragons had bulked up his brother – but Charlie had not expected it, so it worked. Bill locked up behind himself and went to find something to occupy himself with. Percival was, thank Merlin, at work, and so were the twins. He had no wish to subject himself to Ginevra or their mother, so he went to find Ronald. The boy was thick and had a temper, but he could play chess like few, and when Harry was being recruited for war, even chess passed the time better than books.

x

Harry didn't tell Bill what he was shown in the meeting with Dumbledore, but he did inform the household that there was to be a second meeting the next day, with an unspecified other visitor present. Then he accepted a tray of sandwiches and locked himself in his room.

He emerged after nightfall, once again climbing out of the window. Charlie was waiting for him – and so was Bill, sitting under the sill and eavesdropping (though he wasn't sure whether it counted as eavesdropping when Harry knew he was listening).

"Are they really going to make you fight?" Charlie asked when Harry didn't speak first.

"First they're going to train me, but yes, that's what it comes down to."

"And you are going along with it?"

"I don't have a choice," Harry said, rueful. "The Dark Lord _will_ come after me, no matter where I go. I might as well get some assistance."

"Is there…" Charlie choked and tried again: "Is there anything I could do to make it easier on you?"

"Stop trying to give me hope, Charles. I'm better off without it. Night."

Bill closed his eyes and tried his damn best to feel something else than the hopelessness that Harry was feeling. It didn't work.

x

Severus Snape's presence in the Burrow felt like a punch to the gut. The scowling sable man refrained from unnecessary remarks on the address of the residents or their residence, but his mere presence and the memories it evoked were unpleasant enough. Bill especially didn't want the Potions Master anywhere near Harry.

"Potter," Snape said with a marginal incline of his head in Harry's direction. "Or is it Weasley?"

"It's Potter, and it's not going to change," Harry replied, unabashedly displaying his bitterness. He briefly glanced at Bill and added: "It's not like anyone would want me."

Snape glared at Harry and opened his mouth – if Bill knew him it was to deliver a stinging insult bashing Harry's self-pitying and attention-seeking tendencies – but something in Harry's eyes, or perhaps Harry's mind (Snape was the type to be skilled in Legilimency) convinced him otherwise. Ready as the man obviously had been to hate Harry Potter at first sight, he nodded with a hint of acceptance and silently took a seat.

A tea-set appeared on the desk and Dumbledore politely offered all of them a cup – all of them declined – and addressed Harry: "Mr Potter, Severus and one or two other members of the Order of the Phoenix will tutor you. Severus will be in charge of your training. I am sorry that we are secluding you in this manner, but had we had a longer time to prepare, this would not have been necessary."

It actually surprised Bill when Harry simply nodded and didn't rise to defend him from the snub. He immediately chastised himself for thinking something as absurd, but the damage was done. Whatever it was that had changed between him and his charge, his subconscious was already aware of it.

"I understand, Mr Dumbledore," Harry replied with a fake placating smile. He seemed to reflect the headmaster's expression back at the old wizard. "I would like for you to show Mr Weasley and Mr Snape what you have showed me."

Being called 'Mr Weasley' hurt. It shouldn't have, and even if it did Bill shouldn't have acknowledged it, but there it was: the complete corruption of their… relationship.

Dumbledore grew serious at the request. "Are you certain, my boy? The utmost secrecy is necessary-"

"Nevertheless," Harry cut in, unhappy about being called 'somebody's boy', but sucking it up like life in Egypt taught him to suck it up, "I want Mr Weasley and Mr Snape to know." His tone was sinister.

Bill could guess that he was not going to like what he would see, but even he could not have anticipated Dumbledore retrieving a pensieve and replaying a memory for them, especially not a memory of Sybil Trelawney speaking in a deep, raspy voice: "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies; and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not; and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…"

It was plain and so was Harry's deliberate cruelty in showing this to Bill. It was something to throw into Bill's face, a get-back for some imagined offence.

"Headmaster," Snape said, grey in the face, "is that how it ends?"

"The first line repeats one more time," Harry replied, "but that's it. I trust you'll have sufficient motivation to aid me?"

Snape met Harry's flat gaze and simply nodded.

Dumbledore leant forward and peered over his spectacles. "Thank you for dealing with this unpleasant matter with such unexpected maturity, Mr Potter. Severus will meet you here in a week's time." He rose and extended his hand. Bill felt a vestigial amount of satisfaction when Harry made no move to take it. Dumbledore, however, took the refusal with grace, and departed with the final words: "Good bye, my boy, and good luck."

Snape stood then, slightly apprehensive, but also inordinately curious. "Will you actually be here?"

Harry smiled grimly. "That doesn't depend on me."

Snape looked over at Bill and nodded with understanding. "I shall see you – or not."

x

Harry didn't meet Charlie in the garden again. Bill knew that Harry didn't like Charlie and didn't trust him, and it stood to reason that he had participated in the conversations to indirectly communicate with Bill. When Bill did not respond, Harry gave up.

One commodity that had always been at short supply in the Burrow was privacy, and Bill found himself wishing the week of Hell was over as soon as possible, so he could pack up and go back to Egypt. He wanted Harry to be gone already, for Merlin's sake!

"Bill?"

He suppressed a growl and looked at his little sister.

She hesitantly approached him and sat down beside him, shoulders hunched. "He's really the real Harry Potter?" she asked.

"Yes," Bill replied. It took a lot of effort not to bite the girl's head off for being dumber than Ronald for a change.

"And he hates me?"

Bill rubbed his temple. "No, he doesn't. He is just angry, because…" He faltered and fell silent. He couldn't think of a way to describe to a fourteen-year-old girl what it felt like when your entire life fractured and fell apart around you. He wasn't as malevolent as to wish her to understand. "…because he hurts," he finished eventually.

"But you can make it better, can't you?"

Bill shook his head. "This time I can't. I don't think anyone can."

Ginevra sat in silence and eventually her shoulders began to shake and Bill realised she was crying: crying for Harry like he never would, maybe even a bit for himself – which was wholly useless. He patted her back; she took that as an invitation and threw herself at him, bawling her eyes out and most likely getting snot on his tunic.

He despised, _despised_ children.

x

Tension rose in the Burrow as Ginevra's birthday rolled by. Harry startled everyone by attempting to participate for about an hour before he broke and put a set of walls between himself and everyone else. He was trying, Bill could tell, to be someone he wasn't, someone social and warm, inspiring friendship and loyalty rather than fearful respect. That didn't work for Harry and his effort was doomed to failure from the beginning…

Bill vaguely remembered having had a similar feeling about his abduction of Harry: a doomed effort. And here it was – the doom upon them.

Fred and George's room featured a double-bed (which they refused to relinquish even after they had started Hogwarts) and a set of considerable privacy wards, but Bill had known how to walk through the Burrow's walls since he had been a kid himself.

He remained standing at the foot of that bed while Harry tossed and turned in the throes of a nightmare. The nightmares were not a recent development – Harry had had them since before he had met Bill – but they had gotten worse in the past year or so. Bill would have wagered now that it coincided with the Dark Lord's revival.

Suddenly Harry stiffened and opened his eyes. He wiped at his forehead; his palm came away stained with blood, but the scar was already sewing itself back together. The process was fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. It granted the witness an insight into how twisted, how macabre and insane the Dark Lord truly was. Bill was by no means a fainting innocent, but observing as a child's flesh knitted itself together in the wake of mental torture made him want to vomit.

Harry did his damn best to ignore Bill's presence, but Bill had never been ignorable, especially when he wished to be acknowledged. He reached out for Harry; the boy flinched away from the touch. It was impossible to guess why: whether it was just anger, or if he needed time to recover from the dream.

"You're not here," Harry said, most likely trying to convince himself he was hallucinating. Bill conjured a cloth and reached out again, and Harry tried to dodge – a brief scuffle followed – they ended up on the floor with Bill gripping the back of Harry's neck and wiping congealing blood from his face. The boy smelled of sweat, like he did almost always, and Bill very nearly submitted to the illusion of contentment.

"You're not here, are you?" Harry asked, imploring Bill to give him the answer he wanted to hear, to lie to him if necessary…

"In any case, I _should not_ be here," Bill replied, his index finger tracing the recently mended lightning-bolt-shaped gash on Harry's forehead. The boy virtually glowed in the night, so pale was he. Had the same thing happened during the past nights? Had Harry had to suffer?

"You don't have to stay," the boy mumbled, ineffectively trying to push Bill's hands away. He was alarmingly weak; normally he would have managed to at least put up a fight. His eyes slid shut. "You can go back to Egypt. I don't need to be babysat."

Wasn't that the truth? At eight the kid had been fairly independent. At sixteen, Bill could hardly remember when he had last spared Harry more consideration than he would an adult. He hadn't warded his books and alcohol in years. He hadn't watched his mouth. He hadn't held back in their confrontations.

"I know." One more word and his voice would have cracked. He didn't want some half-cocked vigilante group stealing Harry form him. Harry was his – his accomplishment.

"I don't need you here," the boy insisted.

"I know," Bill repeated, taking advantage of Harry's fatigue and pulling him closer for a while, hoping against hope that when he would be spending Christmas completely alone for the first time in his life – imbibing, no doubt – he would be able to remember the way it felt _not_ to be alone.

If for nothing else, then to prove it to himself that solitude was a blessing.

"You hate it here," Harry said, befuddled, when Bill wouldn't remove himself. The wooden floor was uncomfortable and the circulation in Bill's legs was cut off, and he still wouldn't move, because if he took one step now it would be, like Confucius was said to have said, the beginning of a journey of a thousand miles that led to nothing he wished to attain. In a way Bill understood the pureblood supremacists: many were but traditionalists fearing for their way of life, fearing that one day Dumbledore would turn up on their footstep and inform them that he was taking away whatever shaped their world. Bill had no sympathy for Death Eaters – definitely not after he witnessed how Harry's scar closed itself – but he saw clearly how easy it was to hate Albus Dumbledore.

"Then why are you still here?"

Bill looked up and searched the room for Harry. Just now, he had had the boy captured; a moment of inattention and he was gone. Like a damn mirage…

"Why won't you leave and make this easier on everybody?" Harry asked, pulling Fred's or George's blanket closer around him, huddled in the furthest corner of the bed.

"I don't know," Bill told him, because it was easier than spending hours monologuing about the quanta of pros and cons and how none of that mattered in the end, since Bill only needed an excuse that sounded rational to himself.

"But you still won't leave, will you," Harry said knowingly.

Bill shook his head – and left, walking through the opening in the wall transfigured with an automatic series of gestures.

x

Snape returned as he had promised. Harry was waiting for him, packed and ready to depart on a trip he might not come back from. The two went along like a house on fire – sans the expected heat and explosions. Harry appreciated Snape's cynicism (which was but a tiny step up from Bill's cynicism) and Snape found it difficult to be continuously angry at someone genuinely amused by his sniping.

They sat down on the opposite sides of the kitchen table; Bill settled next to Harry, seething.

Snape found that humorous, apparently. "Ordinarily, I would require that you call me 'sir';" he told Harry, somehow softer in the absence of his obligatory sneer, "however, I see that you have reserved that for somebody else. The amount of mocking you are capable of injecting into the word is admirable."

Bill growled. "Stop sticking your overlarge nose into our business-"

"You do not wield quite enough power to make me 'tremble in fear', Weasley," Snape replied calmly, distinctly unimpressed. "Moreover, I shall remind you – since the intellect you are so proud of has failed you in this matter – that you were the first one to stick his nose into other people's business. Had it not been so, Potter would not be facing this situation."

"He was _abused_, Snape," Bill snarled. It made his skin crawl, _still_, whenever he remembered arriving at the awful muggle place and finding a bruised little boy forced into gardening.

Snape might have lost the sneer momentarily, but it didn't make him cognizant of ethics.

"It shouldn't surprise me that you would condone cruelty to children, but I could not stand leaving an infant in such conditions."

Much to Bill's surprise, it wasn't Snape who spoke next. Harry snorted, leaned his head back until it touched the wall and, with narrow eyes trained at Bill, said: "And thus you removed me without ascertaining that you had something better to offer."

"I gave you _everything_ you needed, Harry," Bill retorted, deeply offended. He had risked a lot to do so, too, and actually deserved gratitude. It would have been far easier for him to just leave Harry Potter to be trampled over by those muggles.

"You so did not, sir," the boy said with a barely credible amount of contempt.

Bill shivered – and so did Snape, who, whether out of self-preservation or sick pleasure, decided to keep his mouth shut and not interfere with this cosy example of Weasley-Potter domesticity.

Bill couldn't leave that accusation un-countered. He had to argue. "You never wanted for anything in my care-"

"Save for my humanity," Harry interrupted him, baring his teeth. "You filled me up here-" he raised his hand to his chin to suggest just how _full of shit_ he was, "-with notions of human weaknesses, despicabilities and failures."

Bill heard him, but he didn't really listen. The accusatory tone and the anger Harry unthinkingly hurled at him injured his pride, and while Bill generally didn't mind witnesses when he resorted to violence, Snape's presence loomed over the Burrow's kitchen like a huge shadow.

Harry cringed away from him, anyway, anticipating physical retaliation, as if it happened frequently. It did _not_. Bill tried very hard to keep a tight rein on his temper, but he just wasn't cut out for parenthood. And damn Harry, too, for having been taught to accept abuse as if it was perfectly normal.

"I gave you life!" Bill snarled. He gave Harry his own bed, even warded it against scorpions and what-have-you, he gave him sufficient amounts of food and drink, gave him books and granted him education befitting his skills, shaped his personality to the point when it was possible to say that Bill was the one who gave Harry himself.

Harry hastily scrambled off the bench and spat: "And showed me why it wasn't worth living!"

Bill let the words pass without affecting him – Harry didn't feel like that, and if he had, it wouldn't matter – but even so he wasn't going to let it stand. The recalcitrant boy backed away and then, in a flash, Snape was standing between them; the vast black folds of his robe settled down around his legs and his face gained an inscrutable non-expression.

"Get out of my way," Bill whispered, enraged to the point when he became doubtful of his enunciation. How dare Snape… "Get out of this house!"

Harry, never one to appreciate heroes, and never one to see himself as requiring rescue, stepped out from behind Snape and – as though he had a death wish – tugged on the Potions Master's sleeve.

"I shall be glad to leave," Harry muttered, casting a dark glare at the staircase. "I loathe this place."

Snape said nothing as he followed Harry outside. He wouldn't have accepted the statement at face-value, but he had seen enough a week ago to figure out that Harry didn't want to be there and that Harry blamed Bill. How ironic: no matter how adamant the kid was about not needing to be protected, a protector for him always cropped up.

Bill didn't want to admit to himself that this was the end. He hadn't had a chance to say goodbye even… Well, he might have had, but he hadn't taken it… and Harry had looked at him with that horrible knowledge that a final separation – a _forever_ – was coming and took Bill's silence and defensiveness for rejection.

Bill wordlessly watched as Snape shrunk Harry's bag for him and the two walked out into the garden. Then he muttered, under his breath: "You're just jealous." He was startled when he realised that he didn't have a clue about whether it was the truth.

Had he been thinking clearly, he would have remained where he was and waited it out, perhaps even Disapparated before his mother could come in and question him. Instead, he roused himself and went after Harry.

He stepped into the sun and reflexively shielded his eyes. The rest of his family was sitting around the table, as far out of the way of Severus Snape (whom especially the kids didn't want to encounter closely) as possible. It would have been too much to wish for that the final confrontation, the final acid-filled goodbye as it was turning out to be, would play out without an audience.

Standing at Snape's side, reaching barely to the man's collarbone, Harry watched Bill approach him and hesitantly come to a halt, before he revealed that he, too, cast surveillance spells all around him – there was no other way for him to have heard Bill's words.

"Jealous?" the boy asked with mocking incredulity that was downright _wrong_ on a face as young as his. Then he proceeded to try and convince Bill that jealousy truly had nothing to do with his contempt: "I hate your father because he's stupid. I hate your mother because she's fussy and nosy and patronising. I hate Charles because he's too damn _nice_! I hate Percival because he's a bastard with a wand wedged up his ass and the twins because they're bullies and Ronald because he's dumb as bricks! I hate Ginevra because she's so hung up on the 'Boy Who Lived' that it's not funny!"

Bill reared back, stepping away from the boy, who was managing to work himself into heights of fury. Harry had never been particularly receptive to either of the Weasley's attempts to care for him, but it had not occurred to Bill that Harry despised them so much – so _acutely_.

Harry fell silent for a brief moment, to catch his breath and adjust his stance, giving up on pretence of wariness and letting his true emotion show. He waited until Bill met his eyes and then spoke slowly, clearly for all and sundry to witness, targeting Bill's discomfort of goodbyes: "But, you know what? Most of all I hate you, because you had me betrothed to you and never intended to marry me! That was… that was the ultimate snub, sir. I'm going to fight Voldemort now, and if I die there, I want you to know that I died hating you, William Weasley."

Then Harry took hold of the portkey Snape had been offering him for a minute already, and they both disappeared.

"Bill?" his father addressed him with misplaced concern.

"Well…" Bill mumbled, shocked into incoherency. Thunderstruck, he stood gaping at the patch of grass where Harry and Snape had been standing a moment ago. He didn't understand. He knew Harry, better than he ever imagined he would know another person, and this… this _outburst_ didn't seem at all consistent with what he knew. Harry wasn't a drama queen – never had been, and even if he would have had some inclination towards dramatic behaviour, the Dursleys would have stomped it out of him long before Bill had met him. Harry also was rarely deliberately cruel, and though he was a manipulative little shit, he never expended energy unless he gained something in return, and Bill for the life of him couldn't see what anyone could have gained here.

In the end, he shrugged. "Fuck you, then, Potter."


	10. Book 4: Exhaustion

A/N: Happy holidays! Sorry for the delay, slight as it may be, but I've been busy. Christmas is such a stressful affair! Nevertheless, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, and I'd like to doubly thank everyone who wished me luck with my exams – I passed them all! There's just one left for January, but I refuse to stress about that.  
Enjoy the chapter.  
Brynn

x

Book Four: False Dilemma (Perfect Solution)

x

Chapter One: Exhaustion

x

Weeks rolled by and the world did a passing imitation of continuing unchanged. The end of summer in Egypt was more than sweltering and Bill nursed an irritating sore throat from the rapid change of temperature between the surface and the temple.

He made several attempts to denigrate the new addition to the curse-breaker team – a young Slavic woman nick-named Lana as her name was impossible to pronounce – but had to leave off, because she was basically competent and he was making an arse of himself. It was worse still, since the more acerbic he was, the more his 'colleagues' ignored him, stage-whispering about how depressed he was and that they shouldn't be taking him seriously.

Depressed, indeed. As if he cared… as if he cared that a self-important old coot needed just say the word and people's lives were ripped apart.

He didn't play buddies with even those he used to associate with before, and was surprised every time someone came calling.

On one Sunday morning, the man standing on the doorstep was Sydney Carter, messed-up and with gleaming eyes that gave him out as high on substance. "Where is Harry?" he blurted, leaning in and bracing himself against the doorframe so that Bill couldn't shut the door in his face.

"That's none of your business, Carter."

The man sniffed. "It is, when my letters return unopened."

Letters? _So sweet_… Bill gritted his teeth so hard he thought he was going to break a few. He didn't want to think about what made Sydney Carter want to correspond with Harry, much less what would have made him think that Harry would have written back. Even Bill didn't correspond with Harry. He was convinced that the Order would have hidden Harry somewhere where post couldn't reach him… but he hadn't tried, so he couldn't be sure.

Carter seemed to have made the experiment and brought Bill the results – out of the goodness of his heart.

"Were you going to write? How touching…" Bill snarled and made a move to close the door, but Carter – despite the narcotic – was fast enough to wedge his boot into the doorway.

"I am not joking, Weasley!" the man yelled for the entire hallway to hear. "I want to know-"

"Where he is," Bill cut in dispassionately. "Yes, you've said so."

For a moment it seemed like his lack of receptivity shocked Carter out of his indignation and he would calm down, but then his face hardened (Bill wouldn't have thought it possible that limp-wristed Sydney Carter could actually look that fierce) and he spoke in an almost even, quiet tone, but with underlying hatred for Bill that could be heard in every syllable: "So help me Isis, Weasley, if you've harmed that boy-"

"You'll what?" Bill mocked. "You'll reassign me back to the barracks? I've survived that before." That was, basically, the extent of as administrator's competence. While a 'friendship' with any authority figure was a handy thing, and Bill had profited from his influence over Carter for years, the resident paper-pusher was nowhere near important enough a person to make Bill feel intimidated.

Besides, should Carter become too bothersome, Bill wasn't above arranging an accident.

"I'll tell everyone," the man shot back, sweating but determined to see the confrontation through. "You're fast, Weasley, but Harry has more friends around here than you ever will."

Bill felt his jaw tighten. _Harry_ again. It was _Harry_ this and _Harry_ that, where is _Harry_, when will _Harry_ come back and why had _Harry_ left-

Bill was fed up with it. When had his life come to be about the brat? _Harry_ was gone, and that was that. He didn't want to talk about it, especially not to some jumped-up bureaucrat who thought he had a right to the boy based on – what? A couple of conversations? A favour never returned?

He scoffed. "Very well. Take it up with Albus Dumbledore."

Carter's eyes widened. Momentarily, surprise and curiosity overwhelmed his fury. "Dumbledore?"

"He's a member of the ICW and the person who took Harry from my care," Bill explained. There was an undercurrent of black, virulent humour in his voice, satisfaction at being able to shock the other man, and the irony of his own deliberate disregard for his role in the colossal mess. If it was blamed on Dumbledore, maybe people (and when the fuck had Harry managed to collect so many bloody _people_?!) would stop nagging Bill about _Harry_, _Harry_, _Harry_…

"Some care," the administrator grumbled.

Bill sneered. He was thick-skinned enough to roll with a lot of punches, but no one – especially not a pathetic neverwas like this man – was going to harp on the finished 'Weasley and Potter' business. "Sod off, Carter," he said and slammed the door shut with all his power.

Going by the shout of pain from the outside, he might have had the fortune of breaking a couple of Sydney Carter's toes.

x

Carter's ridiculous harping made no dent in Bill's armour of general disinterest, but the idea that the man had attempted to correspond with Harry sparked indignation that Bill found impossible to quash on late nights, regardless of the amount of alcohol he had consumed.

Eventually it became a ceaseless vexation that took his mind off his work at times and made him a hazard, though, with luck, he had so far avoided causing any harm to people or material around him. He _had_ to take measures, and so he decided, on one dragging Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, to write a message. He tried to come up with a justification, but then all his argumentations began to stray into the treacherous waters he had forbidden himself to enter, so he gave up on the effort.

The best reasoning, after all, had always been and always would be the 'because he felt like it'.

He wrote the entire letter on the first attempt, in one sitting, without ruining a single piece of parchment or wasting a single drop of ink. His handwriting was confident but legible, the lines straight, tone civil bordering on polite, but at the same time demanding acknowledgement.

He read through it once, just in case, found no fault with it, sealed the envelope and addressed it to Severus Snape.

x

A week later, on another Sunday, he was sitting in the Three Broomsticks and absently watching Rosmerta's cleavage as she vigorously scrubbed the counter after some rowdier customers had spilt their drinks on it. The weather was abhorrently English, windy, cloudy, cold with an occasional drizzle, and Bill decided that he had definitely not missed the country.

He had an ominous feeling that, if asked why he had come back, his slightly defensive 'because I felt like it' would not work.

"Another pint, Weasley?" Rosmerta asked, straightening.

Bill – whom she remembered due to a series of never-reported incidents of underage drinking from the time he had been a student – refused the offer and, disgruntled about having to wait, stared into the sinking foam in his glass.

The door opened and closed. The draught brought in a few drops of rainwater and the smell of smoke. The floorboards creaked under rapid footsteps of heavy boots.

Bill waited until the man reached his table before he looked up and nodded in greeting.

"Isn't this a surprise," Snape said wryly and sat down. He caught Rosmerta's eye and gestured that he didn't want anything.

Bill heard the sarcasm loud and clear, as well as the insult, but he wasn't interested in getting into a pissing match with his former Potions teacher. He wished to speak with Harry's current guardian and, though officially it would have been most likely Dumbledore, Snape was the only person who had regular contact with the boy and whom Bill semi-trusted.

"Where is he?" Bill asked. "How is he getting on?"

"Suddenly you care?" Snape feigned a surprise. "Am I to understand that-"

"_Snape_," Bill hissed. "I took care of the boy for eight years. I taught him to be a liar –whatever he told you about me, I am sure it's not true."

The Potions Master acknowledged the statement with a vague, noncommittal sound, and interlaced his fingers while he deliberated – mimicking Dumbledore, though it wasn't clear whether he was aware of it or not.

Eventually, he nodded. "I have spent enough time in Mr Potter's presence to be aware of his propensity for malice. I cannot inform you of his place of residence – and I would not if I could – but I can tell you that he goes to bed every night in a good mood brought on by having offended or humiliated one of his new acquaintances."

The corners of Snape's mouth had quirked up – apparently he was amused by Harry's blatant show of insecurity and inability to fit in with the strangers who surrounded him and constantly made demands of him to be something he never wanted to be.

Harry did not have a single ally in that den of wolves, and Bill knew that Dumbledore would not allow him a say in the boy's life again.

He glanced at Snape. The man had an abrasive personality, a cynical sense of humour, and rarely resorted to patronising. Harry had seemed to get along with him – although, knowing Harry, that meant nothing at all.

"I'll give you anything that's within my power to obtain…" Bill said, gritting his teeth to help him withstand the sudden _focus_ of Snape's, "if you teach him enough to survive." He had meant to say 'if you will help him'. He was a fool. As if there was any way of bribing Snape into acting as emotional support for a child – not that Harry was much of a child, but he wasn't just fine on his own either.

"I'll teach him all I can so that he wins, anyway," Snape dismissed the request. His countenance darkened. "I am uncertain if anything I know can help him survive."

Bill wondered just how he was supposed to take that. Was it a warning? A complaint? Was Snape mocking him, assuming that Bill would grieve if Harry were to die, or was it some kind of misplaced sympathy with Snape trying to prepare him for the worst?

"Do you love him, Weasley?" the man asked bluntly, pinning Bill with a pair of glinting dark eyes.

Bill tried to identify disdain in the man's voice, over the steady hum of privacy wards around his table, and failed. For whatever reason, the bitter old teacher and retired spy saw it fit to inquire about the nature of Bill's feelings for his charge in a completely serious and intent manner.

"I don't believe in love," Bill replied simply.

Snape's hands tightened into fits; a barely-contained rage deepened the lines on his face. Bill recognised the expression from Potions classes.

"And you taught it to him. It might just be what kills him in the end," Snape said with a hint of helplessness colouring his anger. He looked older, far beyond his years, eaten up by the circumstances that had shaped him. "On the other hand, you taught him to hate quite admirably. I was, frankly, _astounded_ at the ease with which he picks up Dark Arts and the lack of remorse he feels at their effects."

Bill figured he should feel indignant. Had Snape been disparaging him or one of his siblings, their parents certainly wouldn't have let it pass. Bill, though, had never been prone to lying to himself, and he had not been blind to Harry since August 1988.

"Always the perfect little bastard," he grouched. Harry had too many redeeming qualities for Bill to give up on him, but the fact remained that Harry was a plague on the world around him. "Destroys everything he touches… like an anathema."

Snape's hand surreptitiously inched toward his wand, and he leant back in his seat, as far away from Bill as he could. He observed Bill with cold eyes, hard and unforgiving, as if he believed Bill should be asking for forgiveness, and was not even considering granting it.

"You are a very disturbed – and disturbing – man, Weasley," Snape accused in a whisper that raised the soft hairs on the back of Bill's neck. "I shudder to think how you have twisted that boy throughout the years he had spent under your influence."

Bill hit the table then, rattling his glass and attracting attention from Rosmerta and the few patrons. "I never beat him, Snape!" he snarled. "I never worked him until his hands bled! I made sure he had proper education. He always had a warm bed to sleep in, enough food to eat and people he could depend on. Your precious Dumbledore had granted him neither of this."

Snape waited for Bill to finish his monologue and then quirked an unimpressed eyebrow. "And did it not occur to you, that there might have been a reason for it?"

A reason for condoning child-abuse?! Bill took several deep breaths, so that he wouldn't start yelling again. The privacy wards contained the sound, but the last thing he wanted was to become a side-show for the pub's clientele.

Bill despised children, but even so he had never harmed a single one. He might not have been a guardian material, but he had done his best by Harry, and – if he could say so – he had managed admirably. The idea to put a child deliberately into abusive environment and watch how it made them into a puppet for an old man to use in fighting a war…

"And you dare call me disturbed?" he said quietly.

"Sacrifice one to save the many, Mr Weasley," Snape said, leaning forwards until his lips almost touched the tips of his index fingers. "Are you not familiar with the concept?"

Bill recognised the same tactics as he used in dealing with weaker personalities, and he would not be manipulated. Forcing himself to calm down, he took a sip of his, now too warm, beer, before he looked back at Snape.

The man had leaned back again, more amused than irritated by Bill's entirely too childish show of resistance.

"That makes me almost glad I taught him to hate," Bill said. These wizards and witches wanted to take Harry – a singularly clever, cunning and powerful boy – and make him into a mindless doll on someone's strings. "He should hate you – all of you. Everyone who calls him that blasted moniker, everyone who believes that he should kill the Dark Lord for you." That wasn't enough, though. Harry already hated them, and it made no difference. In the end, they still won – they still managed to make him their tool. "In fact, if I could do it again, I would teach him better. I would teach him so well that as soon as the Dark Lord was dead, he would come after you."

If Bill had thought it through, he would have expected his second tirade to either rile Snape up (the man had never shown a single hint of equanimity) or amuse him again, but Snape frowned instead.

"You would bring him up to be a weapon?" he asked, challenging and at the same time darkly serious. His eyes read Bill's expression, searching – presumably – for hints of aggression. Maybe he thought that Bill would up and come after the Order himself. "My, how quickly you sink to 'our' level, Mr Weasley."

Bill shook his head. Snape was more articulate than himself, there was no doubt about it, but no matter how believable his words sounded, they didn't change the facts. "But I would never beat him, or starve him, or make him believe himself undeserving of humane treatment."

"Which would, in the end, make him hate his fate that much more," Snape concluded.

"You wanted him to be happy that he may sacrifice himself for you?" Bill asked. It made sense. Naturally, for that was how those in power operated. "You're sick."

"No less or more than you," Snape returned.

"Go," Bill growled. He couldn't have stomached more of the conversation. He felt like Charlie probably did whenever he escaped from Bill's presence after Bill had just verbally torn him to pieces. "If Harry dies and you survive, I'll gladly finish what the Dark Lord started in your case."

Snape made a show of being unconcerned as he rose to his feet. "Trust me, Mr Weasley – I shall be looking forward to your visit."

x

Bill came to the Burrow for Christmas, for the first time in nine years. He did not care about Christmas, had not celebrated it since he was still in school, and had not missed it at all.

The Burrow was crowded. Percival the Whiny brought a young woman of surprisingly attractive appearance and stunningly bad taste and introduced her as Audrey, his, honest to Merlin, _fiancée_. Ronald had been followed inside by a girl that made Bill consider several exorcisms.

"Won-Won!" the female screeched at the top of her voice, making not only Bill but also Charlie, Percival, Audrey, the twins and even Ginevra cringe. Bill's father blinked and shook his head in resignation.

Bill stood from the table and decided that not even his mother's turkey was worth suffering through this. He entered his room, sat down on his bed and leaned back, closing his eyes.

He had remembered that he had hated it here, of course, but the nine years in between had erased the acuteness and, gradually, washed away the emotions entirely. He had known why he had left, of course, but after all that time he forgot what it had felt like.

He now saw what Harry had seen after couple of hours he had spent in this Merlin-forsaken Hell-hole. Yes, he hated it here, just like Harry had hated it. He felt that he couldn't breathe this _homeliness_-saturated air, and he now, months too late, understood that Harry had been choking here and unable to ask to be let go, unable to leave.

Bill's headache worsened. His eyes, even closed, burned, and he was considering getting up and leaving before anyone noticed him, when someone knocked on the door.

Logic failed him in this case, because he couldn't figure out who would have been able and willing to abandon Molly Weasley's roast turkey in favour of coming to smoke Bill out of his room.

Although… Could it be…?

No.

Bill shook his head (the headache spiked up briefly) and furiously told himself off for even thinking of the boy. Harry didn't care about Christmas either, and even if he had, the last place on Earth he would have been willing to spend it in was the Burrow, for reasons Bill was entirely too aware of-

Why had he come here, again?

"Son, I know you're in there, and I would truly appreciate it if you spoke to me."

Bill, surprised to hear his father's voice, waved his wand and opened the door from where he was sprawled. "Come in."

It was a practically novel situation. Arthur Weasley had not entered his eldest son's bedroom (at least to Bill's knowledge) in some dozen-odd years; now, bidden in, he briefly hesitated before he entered. From the way he was looking around himself, he had, indeed, not broken in to snoop while Bill had been abroad.

"I noticed that something was troubling you, Bill," the man said tentatively. Uncomfortable, with his shoulders hunched and lips pursed in a self-deprecating grimace, he continued: "I know all too well that you do not wish to confide in me – you never trusted me, do not think for a second that I was blind to it – but I want you to know that I am still your father, and if there is something, _anything_ I can help you with, I will do my absolute best-"

Bill stared at the man for a while, expressionless, contemplating. Usually he would have dismissed the offer out of hand, but usually his father would not have been able to do a thing for him.

There was something… He was a fool for speaking up, but he had been a fool for thinking his life could go on as if Harry Potter had never happened to him.

"Would you ask Dumbledore…" Bill paused, literally unable to utter 'please' to his father. "I want to join the Order."

It was a lie but, maybe, for some incomprehensible reason, Bill wanted to be lied to and without Harry there to do it he resorted to filling the position himself.

His father gave him a peculiar half-smile, somewhat proud and at the same time disappointed in a way, like the poor sod could not even decide what he was feeling.

"If that is all I can do, then that is what I shall do," the man replied and stood, blessedly without any mention of 'patriotism', the 'right thing to do', 'greater good' or 'Gryffindor bravery'. "Come get a bite later, when it's not so crowded. Your mother would have a conniption if you went to bed without dinner." With that he left.

Bill closed his eyes again. Why was everyone under the delusion that he cared?

Ah, of course – he had manipulated them into thinking so. That made sense. It was somewhat disappointing that the only person he had given a damn about, the only one he could not play like that, had professed to hate him and left with a man who had promised to make him into a soldier.

And why the heck wouldn't Bill's eyes stop burning?

x

Mid-January, Bill portkeyed into Britain for his first Order of the Phoenix meeting.

He had expected to be interrogated, perhaps even dosed with truth potions or subjected to Legilimency, but no one bothered. He was given a piece of parchment with an address on it to read and burn afterwards, and his parents (his mother gushing all the time) lead him through a door of a London townhouse into a hall that wouldn't have been out of place in the Dark Lord's own residence.

"Hello – Bill, right?" a tall, gaunt wizard greeted him at the foot of the stairs and came forth, extending a hand.

Bill took it, noticing beneath the disquieting thinness the man's grey eyes and aristocratic features.

"I'm Sirius Black," the wizard said, and waited for a reaction.

Bill nodded. Sirius Black had been accused of murdering Harry's parents and sent to Azkaban; his presence here meant that the story was bullshit but no one found a way to prove it. Certainly, had Harry believed that Black was responsible for his family's extermination, there would have been an 'accident'.

"William Weasley," Bill repeated, unnecessarily.

Black snorted. "Well, welcome to my _humble abode_. Don't mind the décor, we're working on getting it off the walls, but mother dearest made it a bit more difficult than we'd have liked."

Bill's father gave him a last worried look, but then he and his wife were pulled into a crowd of people, most of whom Bill knew only cursorily.

"Harry told me about you," Black grumbled once the listening ears were gone, looking at Bill askance.

Bill shrugged. "He most likely lied."

Black scowled and it seemed as if he was going to protest, but another man turned up, out of nowhere, and put a hand on Black's shoulder. He was shorter, also thin (though not quite as alarmingly as Black), and his hair was graying despite his relatively young age.

"I'm Remus Lupin," the man said, and Bill obligingly shook his hand, too. "Harry's parents were our friends, but we were unable to take care of him due to… circumstances."

Black growled, and Lupin's face settled in a sad expression that, Bill suspected, was his most frequent one. They looked like they needed to talk, and Bill figured he might as well let them, for they were obviously in regular contact with Harry and might offer some real information.

"No matter what Professor Dumbledore says," Lupin continued, "I want to thank you for taking care of Harry for all these years. He's different than we would have wanted him to be, but I get the feeling that he had not been unhappy before, and that's most important."

'Had not been unhappy before' implied that Harry was 'unhappy' now, whatever that meant. From what Bill could see of Black and Lupin, the two would not stand for anyone starving or beating the boy, but neither of the two men looked strong enough to oppose Dumbledore or Snape.

"He said you let him do whatever he wanted," Black spoke up, suspicious. "He's used to drinking and he's… he's not a virgin."

Bill bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He doubted Black at sixteen had been innocent in any sense of the word either. "And you take everything he says at face value, right?"

"He's my godson! He wouldn't lie to me!"

All chatter in the hall stopped and faces turned to see the source of the shouting. Lupin put his hand back onto Black's shoulder and squeezed. Azkaban apparently had not left the man untouched: it was a small miracle that Black had remained more or less sane through the ordeal; rationality or mental balance would have been too much to ask for.

The Order of the Phoenix was a parade of freaks.

Bill was about to tell Black that while he might think of Harry as his godson, Harry wouldn't ever think of him as his godfather, but was prevented by the timely arrival of their esteemed leader. Dumbledore thought it to be humorous to request entrance by ringing the bell, which roused a portrait up till then hidden behind moth-eaten drapes. The witch depicted started spewing invective every-which way, and suddenly most of the crowd including Bill was processed towards a living room.

They perched on every approximately horizontal surface and waited until Black, Lupin and whoever they had assisting them had silenced the possessed picture (Bill considered offering his services to destroy it, but decided that he wasn't obligated to take initiative). He took a look around and recognised some of the faces: Charlie, Fred and George were present, next to them sat a Hufflepuff Metamorphmagus he remembered from Hogwarts, then Mad-Eye Moody, a few seats over he thought he glimpsed Filius Flitwick.

Dumbledore entered and on his heels came Snape, followed by scowling Black and Lupin.

Harry was absent.

x

An hour later, Bill was beginning to regret his decision to join this rag-tag group. They had no clearly defined objectives, no plan of action; the only one with a concise idea of what was happening was Dumbledore himself and he wasn't telling anyone.

The headmaster went around, looking at times grievous and at times benign, doling out praise and apologies, and assigning tasks that no one saw the point of. It was a cult of personality, and Bill recalled his end-of-term History project in sixth year: German Zaubereiministerium 1932-1945. He saw too many parallels between Grindelwald and Dumbledore for comfort.

"…thank you for your participation in this event," the headmaster finished saying to a group of chosen who had been a part of a vigilante force that had recently averted a Death Eater attack in one of the mixed muggle-wizard villages. "Does anyone have any ques-"

"Where is Harry?" Bill asked, standing up.

He ignored the indignant looks from all around the room and concentrated on the spot between Dumbledore and Snape, careful not to meet either's eyes. His knowledge of Occlumency was rudimentary – he would have to work on it, but for now even a shoddy solution was better than having his thoughts read.

"I asked Mr Potter to come," the old headmaster replied, "but he responded quite resolutely that he is preparing to fight Lord Voldemort and will not attend every meeting."

"How selfish!" some idiot from the peanut gallery asserted. They were lucky that they were shielded by their peers, otherwise Bill might have sent them to keep Marcella Blatt company.

"Hardly, my dear," Dumbledore replied with infinite patience. "You must remember that he is still but a child, and one that has no attachment whatsoever to our fellowship. Were it not for the prophecy, I do not believe he would have been persuaded to fight at all."

"Then again, were it not for the prophecy, it wouldn't have been necessary," Lupin spoke up, both hands gripping Black to stop him from flying off the handle at the idiots.

"You are correct, Remus, naturally." Dumbledore paused for a moment, and Bill had the strangest impression that the old man might have been suppressing a sigh. "The circumstances have been most unkind to young Mr Potter. We must be thankful that he is choosing to stand with us in this war, and aid him in any way we can.

"Now, if there are no other pressing matters, I truly need to return to Hogwarts and relieve Minerva of the pressures of Headship."

There were a few scattered laughs at the weak jest, and Dumbledore fled – as far as the doorway before he was detained by a witch who even in the house hadn't taken off her pointed hat. The meeting, nevertheless, fell apart, and those in hurry pushed past the headmaster to the exit, while another group aimed for, presumably, the dining room.

Bill was snuck upon by his mother.

"Such a pity that the dear couldn't come," she said, smiling sympathetically and patting Bill's upper arm. "Why, just last week I spoke with him, and he is such a nice young man-"

"Did you tell him I was coming?" Bill asked, suspecting what had happened.

"Of course I did, dear – should I not have?"

Bill chuckled bitterly. "Well, he's sure made good on his escape, hasn't he?"

"You think he… oh. Oh, I am sorry-"

"You couldn't have known," Bill replied with an attempt on placating smile that made him want to vomit. His mother bought it, though, and that was important. He was going to exercise his rage later, in private.

He glanced over his mother's head, and spotted Snape also making good on his escape. There was no way Bill could get through the throng and catch the man before he had Disapparated.

"You're staying for dinner, of course-"

He silently followed his mother to a kitchen with a medieval oven and smoke-blackened walls. She hastened to check the pots and directed a 'Hestia' to get the tableware. Bill found himself a seat on the edge of a bench and hoped that he would have a chance to speak at least with Black and Lupin-

"You are ze Uiliam Ueesly, _non_?" asked a female voice.

Bill spun. Next to him, with barely a foot of space between them, sat a blonde young woman with the kind of face and body that broke men's hearts. She was surveying him with cold blue eyes.

"So I am. It is a pleasure to meet you…?"

"Fleur Delacour." She offered him a hand.

Bill took it, but instead of shaking it he brought it to his lips.

Fleur's eyes narrowed as she considered him again, but then her smile widened and Bill figured that he knew what he was doing tonight.


	11. Book 4: Confrontation

A/N: Happy New Year! Thanks for your response, keep it up, stay tuned for the last chapter!  
Brynn

x

Book Four: False Dilemma (Perfect Solution)

x

Chapter Two: Confrontation

x

"You did good, Weasley," Flannery said and patted Bill's shoulder.

Bill looked heavenwards and waited until the Doctor was gone so that he could get off of the stool and leave.

They had had a fatal injury on site today, for the first time in three years, and most of the witnesses were in shock. Policy dictated that everyone present had to have a medical examination, and Cyril Flannery – the replacement for Blatt, who'd 'suffered a heart-attack and died' – liked to offer moral support.

The fatality had been Mortimer Mazar: a bit of a legend among the curse-breakers, who had come to visit and, perhaps, offer a lecture on some of the rarer types of traps. Unfortunately, the old man overestimated himself after he had accepted the invitation to join the first-foray team today, and lost his head a tad too literally. Bill could see the silhouette of the decapitated corpse behind the hangings around the hospital bed, and it made him reconsider what he was having for dinner.

Otherwise he wasn't unduly troubled.

"Good night, Weasley," Carter said as Bill passed his office. It was the first time since the argument about Harry that Carter had addressed him, and Bill was, understandably, less than thrilled.

He nodded in response and walked into the night. There was a smell of roasted meat in the air, carried on a cool, north wind. Past the edge of the community stars lit the valley, and Bill took a moment to just be and recall the atmosphere, before he went to Britain tomorrow and, perhaps, had to join a battle.

As time progressed and Bill had not been asked to join any of the Order's efforts, he became more and more certain that some Legilimens had screened him and reported that he had not been genuine at all in his desire to join. He was only ever invited to the most general meetings, where little of importance was discussed. He had seen Harry once; the boy had pretended not to notice him and left while Bill had been distracted by Fleur.

Fleur was another matter entirely. What Bill had first thought would be an understanding had progressed until, five months later, he realised that they were pretty much exclusive. He left for the Merlin-forsaken island bi-weekly, stayed the weekend, and returned spent enough for the next fortnight. He should have paid more attention when Fleur had warned him about her Veela ancestry, but at that time she might have talked about being a harpy or a troll and he wouldn't have minded.

It helped that she was the best lay he had ever had.

Bill smirked into the night. He was going tomorrow: first to the meeting, and afterwards to a private one with an alluring young woman who seemed quite impressed with him. Life wasn't nearly as bad as he was afraid it would be… Yes, that was a good thought to fall asleep to.

x

Bill entered Number Twelve Grimmauld Place to find not the usual chaos, but a pandemonium.

Sirius Black was sitting in an armchair, the legs of which were standing on the rim of the hangings covering his mother's portrait. He rested his feet on the troll-foot umbrella stand and cradled a glass of wine in one hand (in a typical pureblood fashion), but the look in his eyes was nothing short of desperate. He ignored the chattering wizards and witches around him, just like he ignored Bill.

"What's going on?" Bill asked, entering the living room.

His family noticed him and he was immediately pounced on.

"The poor boy!" his mother lamented. "The poor, poor boy!"

That didn't explain anything. Harry was alright, surely. What had happened then?

"Dumbledore's dead, Bill," Charlie said.

Together, the group that congregated around him (as the new-comer who had not had a chance to read the Daily Prophet) managed to explain the circumstances. Finally, they drifted off topic and began to guess what consequences Dumbledore's absence would have, as Bill seized the chance to come to his own conclusion about what had happened to the headmaster.

The opinions varied. Most thought Draco Malfoy to be the guilty one. Several were convinced Snape had done it, but so far no one had voiced that loudly enough for Snape to need to defend himself. Various Death Eater names were thrown into the debate for good measure, but Bill had a different idea, one that no one shared with him and everyone would have found ludicrous.

There was simply something eerily familiar about finding a man's dead body in the morning, whether it was on the stairs of a temple or at the foot of a tower. No one had ever pointed fingers in Haidar's case, either.

It meant that Harry had access to Hogwarts, at the very least, but most likely that Harry was actually training there. Bill for a few fanciful minutes played with the notion of applying for the post of the DADA teacher next year, before he dismissed it. His wish to see Harry was nowhere near strong enough for him to subject himself to a year of torture.

x

"You stopped coming to ze Order meetings," Fleur said, buttoning up her blouse.

Bill's eyes followed the curve of her hip and chest up, until he reached her face. She was pale – she was _always_ pale – but he thought he could detect a faint flush he had brought on.

"Since Dumbledore died, nothing of any value has been accomplished," Bill said, meaning that since the old man had bit it, his underlings had been running around like headless chickens.

"Per'aps," Fleur generously allowed. "Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are becoming impossible to stand. All zey say is 'arry zis and 'arry zat…"

"They talk a lot about Harry?" Bill asked, rolling over to his side. Perhaps he should consider coming to one of the meetings and interrogating the two men.

"Very much," Fleur replied, closing her robe. "But zey say nossing of importance. The boy 'as gone away; zey know not where 'e is and zey know not what 'e is doing."

"Is he alone, then?" Bill did his best to sound nonchalant, but from the look Fleur gave him he knew he had failed. Still, she didn't appear worried just because he was asking about the welfare of his former charge.

"_Non_. 'e 'as zat awful Snape man wiz 'im."

Bill gritted his teeth, accepted his kiss goodbye and lay back. He did not feel like portkeying back tonight; he would wait for tomorrow morning.

Harry was alone with Snape, doing Merlin-knew-what Merlin-knew-where, most likely encountering mortal danger on daily basis. Well, that wasn't his business anymore. As long as Potter managed to kill the Dark Lord… and even if he didn't, Bill would simply stay in Egypt permanently. There was nothing tying him to this backwards country.

For some reason, Bill had trouble falling asleep, despite the very enjoyable sex he had had beforehand.

x

In October, Fleur moved back to France. It took Bill a while to obtain a new reusable portkey, and he paid a visit to the tavern in the meantime. The clientele had changed since he had last come, and he had always had a knack for spotting the right prospects.

"Never had a curse-breaker before," the woman was nattering. "Never had an Englishman, 's a matter of fact-"

Bill noted that she had dyed her hair.

"Two beds!" she exclaimed as they entered his apartment. "Roommate's got a late night?" She nearly fell over in a fit of giggles.

"I live alone," Bill replied shortly. She didn't listen. She was too drunk to notice when he started taking off her clothes.

As a means to an end she had sufficed, but Bill resolved to pick someone with personality next time. Fleur had spoilt him for this kind of women.

x

Bill gave up trying to anticipate why Carter had called him to the office, and relaxed back in the armchair, waiting to hear whatever the man though he would need to hear.

"In August, it will have been ten years on the job for you, Weasley," Carter said, maintaining a civil tone with visible effort.

Bill wondered if the man had tried to send more letters to Harry, and if so then why? Utterly disinterested in Carter's speech, he thought instead of the missive he had received early that morning.

"… naturally, a raise, but a number of positions are opening for you…"

The Order of the Phoenix was asking him to come. There was nothing at all hidden in the letter. They were calling in anyone and everyone they had ties with, for the decisive battle.

"… Devant asked, but it depends on your response, since you have seniority over him…"

Bill had already decided he was going. Fleur would probably be there: she liked to think of herself as cold, but she had a heroic need to 'stand against the evil', as she had once put it; his family would be there (as the impulsive righteous Gryffindors they were)… Harry would be there.

He was being sentimental, and he might die due to it, but he wasn't certain what defined the 'better' course of action in this instance. He 'felt like going'.

"… until the end of June," Carter finished, and looked at Bill questioningly.

Bill rose to his feet and collected the pile of parchment Carter had readied for him. "I'll have to think about it," he said and went his way.

He might be dead by tomorrow evening, so what was the point of deciding now? He would rather go pick a girl and enjoy himself.

x

The only person left in Grimmauld Place was Black who, naturally, couldn't show his face in public. He had drunk himself into stupor, but managed to direct Bill to Hogwarts.

The Apparition wards were wide open, and Bill strolled straight to the Great Hall. The children were sitting around one of the tables… They must have been the elder years, permitted to join the battle if they volunteered. Ronald was there among them and so was Ginevra. A young woman with a truly _memorable_ hair was sitting between them, worrying a quill beneath rodent-like teeth.

Bill went straight to the Head table, where Moody was giving out instructions. He was noticed quickly, given hateful glares (there were some difficulties with the more vigilant vigilantes never forgiving him for abandoning the war effort), and sent through straight to Mad-Eye himself.

"You will do what you do best, Weasley – monitor and maintain the wards!" the old Auror ordered, and put Bill out of his mind.

"I'll show you the way," a familiar voice sounded behind Bill's back.

Bill turned around and saw… Percival… except this young man looked little like Bill's whiny brother. He had lines of permanent scowl on his face and his eyes were cold.

"Follow me," the new Percival commanded, and didn't wait for a response before setting out.

Bill walked by his younger brother's side, out of the Hall, out of the castle, to the front lawn.

Percival counted his steps under his breath, and finally stopped and pointed at a patch of heather in an otherwise entirely uninteresting spot. "That there is the node. The wards flow from there. Your task is to protect that."

Without another word, he left.

It occurred to Bill that he had not had an opportunity to speak with his family in more than half a year. It seemed that at least some of them thought him a traitor.

x

Bill had a couple of disillusionment and invisibility spells on him in addition to the uncountable wards he had cast before the Hell began – effectively, he was encased in an impenetrable dome of magic, together with the node – but even so he shivered, lying on the ground, and feared that he was going to die.

Again and again he called himself an idiot for coming, but it was too late to change his mind now and-

A Death Eater fell, cut in two by a vicious Dark curse, and behind him, half-covered in blood, appeared a young man in duelling robes. Bill watched, stunned, as milky second lids slid over green eyes, and the man lifted his wand to shield against a bolt of fire, unaware of a giant snake behind him-

The snake reared to strike.

"Potter!" a man's voice yelled at the same time a woman shouted: "Look out!"

Like a whirlpool of shadows, out of nowhere, sprang Snape. He spun back to back with Harry, taut, wand at the ready and spitting out ugly twisting pinkish light. It was in the nick of time too, because where the serpent had aimed for Harry's unprotected nape, it sunk its teeth into Snape's neck.

Bill let out a sigh of relief and dispassionately watched Snape fall to his knees, grip the snake's twisting body and rip it away from himself. Blood _fountained_ from him and Harry cast, Bill was sure, the Killing Curse, because there was a flash of green and the madman he had been up against fell lifeless to the ground.

The Death Eaters began to retreat then, but Harry had eyes only for the dying man at his feet; he crouched and listened as Snape mouthed something to him. Strands of silvery light enveloped them, and Bill could tell the exact moment when Snape died, because Harry let go of him and began scooping the glowing matter into a vial. Like a machine, the boy rose and walked back to the gates of the castle. He passed by people, ignoring their pleading and congratulations. At one point he stepped over the body of a student, lying in the middle of the path, uniform ripped and strewn all around.

He paused at the gates and signaled McGonagall and Shacklebolt, who had stepped in for Moody. Bill couldn't read the signs, and he couldn't abandon his post to go ask.

x

McGonagall was tired; she looked like Bill imagined the man from Marathon did just before delivering his message. He was half-worried that the old witch would die the moment the battle ended, no matter which way it went, because the relief would stop her heart.

She came by, inquired about the state of the wards and her only response to Bill's assessment ("They're going to hell soon, first Anti-Apparition and Anti-Portkey, then Intruder and the blocks on Dark Arts right afterwards") was a tight-lipped nod. She paused in her cruise when she reached the front steps, where Shacklebolt was surveying the map Lupin had left for them.

"Who- Harry?" someone exclaimed.

As though it was a magic word, Bill found himself facing that direction. There was a red-faced young woman – Tonks, Bill amended when her hair changed to match her flush – cringing behind Shacklebolt, who was looking into empty air behind him.

McGonagall shook her head, but seemed to be staring at the same invisible thing.

"Goddamn you, Harry," Bill whispered. His eyes in vain tried to penetrate the invisibility enchantment.

"I have to let him kill me," a soft but unmistakably Harry's voice said. "That's the only way."

McGonagall went pale and clutched at her heart, like it was going to give out already then and there. "But… Ha- Mr Potter, surely there is-"

"Dumbledore knew this, Ma'am," Harry replied, ignoring the two stupefied Aurors. There was inexplicable amusement in his tone when he added: "Someone should thank William Weasley. Had it not been for him, I might have had a reason to not want to die."

Bill's wand creaked – he had gripped it so hard. He wanted to go there, grab a fistful of Harry's hair and drag him away from this carnage. He didn't know why he didn't. Perhaps he wasn't quite as selfish as to doom all these people by taking away their only hope of salvation… Who was he kidding? He didn't give a broken knut about these people. Were Harry not here, he wouldn't have been either.

x

The battle had picked up again, and this time everyone knew that it was going to last until the victory. No more bathroom breaks – this was for real. The Dark Lord himself was standing over on the top of the hill and every once in a while zapped someone with an Unforgivable.

The lawn was covered with bodies and rubble: one of the walls of the Entrance Hall had crumbled and crushed several fighters beneath. Bill had experienced the most terrifying instance of his life when an Acromantula had climbed right over him, mistaking him for a boulder.

He saw a Death Eater flaying a child to death just before, somehow, the fighting came to a halt. Dark and Light wizards alike paused with their wands in the air, and Voldemort trained Dumbledore's wand on Harry and said, loud and clear: "Avada Kedavra."

Harry didn't even attempt to dodge. The green glow enveloped him for a second, and Bill turned his head to face the soil so that he didn't have to see… didn't have to know.

He knew he was being an idiot: a freak accident like surviving the Killing Curse might happen once, but it sure as Hell wasn't going to repeat. Still, he waited, magic coiled around him and expecting his commands.

A blonde woman crouched next to the boy, then straightened and looked at the monster. "He is dead, my Lord," she said with far less triumph than she should have felt.

Bill let the wards unravel and activated his portkey. Harry was dead and the Dark Lord had won. There was nothing to remain for, and he had no intention of dying in vain.


	12. Book 4: Termination

A/N: So sorry for the wait, guys! My life got officially crazy and, I'm ashamed to say, I actually _forgot_ to update. Never happened to me before. That's how insane things got.  
Anyway, last chapter here. Nothing more after this… I _am_ playing with the idea of a one-shot side-story in Harry's POV, but I'm not promising anything because, let's face it: I've got _Visionary_ and _Nothing Like Harker_ to work on if I'm feeling non-depressed and inspired.  
Enjoy and review. Bye-bye.

Brynn

x

Book Four: False Dilemma (Perfect Solution)

x

Chapter Three: Termination

x

When Bill woke up the next day, there was the beginning of a party already audible. He showered, dressed and went about to obtain a copy of some kind of international newsletter. He was perversely interested in who killed the Dark Freak when Harry was dead.

"Weasley!" Devant called him with a shit-eating grin and a goblet of wine in each hand. "Come and drink with us!"

"You never said your boy-toy was the Saviour!" Breasted, a lanky American just out of school laughed as if she had ever even spoken to either Harry or Bill.

Bill said nothing, somewhat surprised and waiting for condolences that weren't coming.

"Were you there, Weasley? We haven't seen you till now – we thought you were in Britain for the celebrations…"

Something was wrong. Bill pulled out a copy of the European Oracle from under an empty bottle. It was half-drenched in some kind of yellowish liquid that, thank Merlin, stank of alcohol. The front page featured a picture of tired, emotionless, but _alive_ Harry Potter standing over the corpse of the Dark Freak, under the inch-tall headline: 'You Know Who Defeated!'

Bill sat down, lucky that Devant had been there and sober enough to shove a chair under him. His sight went out of focus and his eyes stung. He closed them and rubbed the bridge of his nose to give himself time to calm down.

It didn't work well. When he looked again, he could just make out the letters. He flipped the page, searching for information on Harry and anyone else he knew personally. There was a list of prominent casualties: it featured Alastor Moody, Severus Snape and Fred and Ronald Weasley, but there was no Potter listed. He glanced back closer to the top: a Cedric Diggory, but no Delacour.

"How is he?" Carter asked quietly, looking more worried than he had any right to be. When Bill blankly stared at the newsletter, Carter sneered at him and muttered: "You don't have a clue, do you? Did you even know he was fighting?"

Bill rounded on the man and, with less grace and more mindless anger than ever, yelled: "I saw him _die_ yesterday! So get out of my face, you self-serving opportunist prick!"

Carter huffed, but Bill's rage failed to intimidate him. Apparently, while Bill hadn't been looking, the man had grown a spine. "That's rich coming from _you_, Weasley," he snapped and walked away from the partying group that, despite Bill's presence and obvious confusion, had not become any less rowdy.

Bill threw the parchment on the floor and strode out of the atrium. Just past the wards, he Disapparated.

x

He strode into the hospital wing at Hogwarts, took a cursory look at the beds, saw no one he knew, and located the medi-witch.

"Madam Pomfrey!" he called.

The nurse glared up from a tray with potions, about to start a lecture on maintaining quiet within the sickbay, but Bill didn't feel like he had that kind of time. He was on a mission. "I was wondering if you knew where I could find Fleur?"

"Fleur…?" the woman repeated, confused. Then she brightened. "Oh! Miss Delacour – she has gone to Diggory Manor; Amos has offered it as a temporary safe-house, bless his soul-"

"Thank you," Bill forced himself to say before he spun and walked out of Hogwarts, leaving the medi-witch staring after him.

The grounds were full of ghosts.

He would have thought that something like battle – or, more accurately, carnage – couldn't have left a mark on him. He carefully avoided thinking of his mother and father… and George. The names he had read in the Daily Prophet were just that, names. There was no substance, no meaning to them.

He certainly didn't have to go to the Burrow and take part in the aftermath.

Bill stopped a couple of feet short of a charred crater in the ground where the node used to be. It had been a good call to Apparate out, it seemed; otherwise he would have been torn to particles when the node imploded. He had narrowly escaped death. Plus, he had a viable excuse for having deserted.

Now, if he had only thought to ask the way to Diggory Manor…

Bill spun and walked back to the castle. He would ask the floo address – the first measure after the battle had ended would have been reinstalling the floo connection, primarily to contact the Ministry and open the passage to St Mungo's. No need for Bill to go searching the hills around Ottery St Catchpole (and risk his family seeing him roaming aimlessly around).

x

Diggory Manor was on a partial lock-down. The only route inside, it turned out, was a private floo connection from the Head's office at Hogwarts (or, alternatively, a portkey created by the owner of the house).

Inconsequently, 'Manor' was too pretentious a description of the house. It was bigger than a cottage, yes, but it could not have housed the younger years evacuated from the school – not without some powerful expansion charms – but Bill didn't have much time to muse on the size of the building because he almost ran into a middle-aged couple shuffling in the opposite direction. The man had red-rimmed eyes and the woman had a lost look, as if she didn't quite know what to do with the girl in a Hufflepuff school-robe that was clutching onto her.

It had been stupid of Bill to become involved in the war, but he was going to make the most of it.

He spied a flash of silvery-blonde hair in an economical bun and moved in the direction, but a wall of wizards and witches waiting for their offspring blocked his way. Emotions were high and Bill would have been loath to start an unnecessary fight, but it turned out that no hostilities were necessary: the commotion itself attracted everyone's attention (kids on the gallery paused in waving to their parents and grandparents and stared), and eventually even Fleur glanced over to see what was going on. Her expression brightened when she noticed Bill.

Bill smirked and lifted a ring high in the air, wordlessly asking. He knew he was one of many on this day, but at least he would have arguments pre-prepared for him if his mother accused him of being insufficiently respectful to his brothers' memory…

Fleur's eyes widened.

Bill twirled the golden band so that the gem twinkled in the artificial light.

Fleur absently excused herself from the woman she had been reassuring about her children's welfare and wove through the throng.

"Marry me?" Bill asked once she came close enough that he didn't have to shout.

"Oh… oh…" She took the ring from his fingers and examined it.

Bill hoped that it passed inspection, but he couldn't tell from her expression.

Fleur looked at him with narrowed eyes, suspicious. "I did not zink you were interested in anyssing permanent…"

As if Bill would let an opportunity like that pass him by. How often did he have a beautiful rich French noble willing to marry him?

"Is that a yes?" he asked, trailing his fingers down the side of her neck to add some incentive.

Fleur huffed, then chuckled, and finally put the ring on her finger and lifted her hand to admire it. "Oh, yes, of course!"

x

Fleur had been too busy to just up and leave, so they had arranged to meet in the evening in Grimmauld Place. Bill took a detour through the Diagon Alley, but even so he arrived long before dinner – if dinner was even going to happen in his mother's absence.

He had expected the house to be deserted. In the wake of a destructive battle with too many wounded for one hospital to admit and enough dead to fill up a newspaper page, most people naturally wanted to spend time with their families or friends. Bill should have realised that some people had no families and no friends.

A loud crack of broken wood made him veer off from his direction and take a detour through the first floor. He stood next to an ajar door, unseen from inside the room which, curiously, seemed to have belonged to Snape (judging by the few beakers and jars on the lid of the heavy chest and the black robe hung over the backrest of a hard wooden chair).

"…somehow can believe it," Harry's voice, void of inflection, was saying. "I've been warned often enough in the past not to form an attachment."

Bill pressed closer to the wall. He could hear blood rushing through his veins; his heartbeat echoed against his ribcage.

Lupin, soft-spoken as ever, replied: "Harry, you'd be welcome-"

"Don't bother. I don't want to go through this again. Four times' enough, don't you think?"

Bill tried to figure out the number. Four? Who had Harry ever cared for? His abusive relatives? Doubtful. Bill? Possibly, once… a long time ago. Certainly not Dumbledore but perhaps Snape – Snape, who had without the slightest hesitation taken a mortal blow meant for Harry-

What was Harry doing in Snape's room again?

A female voice, which Bill tentatively identified as Tonks', protested: "Harry, we wouldn't-"

"Spare me. I've heard the spiel before. It doesn't mean anything." Clever kid. He never forgot, never forgave. No one could do indifference quite as well as Harry Potter. "I don't really know you, and, to be honest, I don't want to."

"What I don't understand, Harry…" Black grumbled, deeply hurt. "If you hate us all this much, why did you refuse Voldemort?"

"Sirius!"

"No, I'd like to know, too, Remus," Tonks supported Black.

They fell silent, waiting for Harry to reply. Downstairs a door slammed shut and the appalling portrait's muffled yelling drifted up the stairs.

"There was nothing I wanted that he could give me," Harry said evenly.

"Can we?" Black asked hopefully. "You know you only have to ask-"

"I know no such thing. And I don't want anything from you," Harry shot him down. Glass clinked – perhaps Black, shocked, had stumbled into the chest. "Leave me alone."

Bill hesitated. What was he going to say? 'Hi Harry, I'm glad you're alive, but I'm going to get married in two months and you're an adult now and should be perfectly fine on your own, so I'm not inviting you back into my life? You never meant that much to me anyway…'

It wouldn't accomplish anything.

x

June came and Bill informed Carter that he wished to be relocated to a site somewhere in Western Europe, preferably France or Britain. The administrator couldn't meet Bill's eyes and when he spoke during their meeting he addressed the wall – it had been so since the newspaper had reported Harry Potter's disappearance.

Bill had not been the least bit surprised by Harry's escape, and at times wondered if Harry was going to come back to Egypt, to places and society he knew and felt moderately comfortable in. Sometimes he imagined that Harry was only waiting until he was gone – until August – to turn up and ask Carter for a job.

Knowing Carter, Harry could have asked for John Baptist's head and he would get it.

Bill took a sip the ale from his glass and looked around the tavern. A few females were giving him the eye, some of them even good-looking enough to consider, but then someone appeared on the barstool on his other side.

"Hello," she said, appropriating Bill's glass, while Bill's eyes roamed her features. He couldn't find a fault: blue eyes, genuinely blonde short hair in sexy disarray, dimple in her cheek when she smiled… "I'm Medea."

"I'm Bill," he replied, and gestured to the barman to get him another glass of the same. He got it in half a minute and lifted it to toast: "To new acquaintances."

"To pleasurable acquaintances," she replied and drank. Her gaze remained sharp, though, and once in a while Bill had the feeling that she was looking through him rather than at him. It made her seem dangerous – and excited him yet more.

"Let me take you out of this place," he suggested the second her glass was empty.

"But, Bill…" Medea said slyly, leaning closer to him while her finger traced his ring. "Good men don't cheat."

"I don't believe in love – and a part-veela's pretty face won't make me change my mind. What she doesn't know won't hurt me."

"A part-veela!" she exclaimed with bated breath. "You're a lucky man!"

"You look like a veela yourself." For once, Bill didn't even have to lie in his flattery. Medea might have had short, spiky hair, but other than that, she met all the criteria amazingly well – the silvery-blonde hair-colour, the clear blue eyes, the soft pale skin and extraordinary beauty of her face and body…

"Never knew my parents," she admitted. "Might be part-veela, for all I know."

They laughed, more out of inebriation than hilarity, and minutes later Bill was leading the woman down the street. "Mind if I Apparate us?" he asked.

She laughed again, like bells – like _Fleur_ – and Bill for a moment became nervous (What if they knew each other? What if they were family?), but then lust became prevalent again and they ended up tripping onto his bed in the apartment.

Medea glanced around and set to unbuttoning his shirt. "Won't your flat-mate come back?" she inquired, obviously afraid of a lover returning too soon.

Bill shook his head and shimmied out of the open shirt. "That bed's empty. I'm living alone for the time being."

Medea let her head fall back and teasingly pulled on the ribbon of her dress. "Well… then that's alright."

x

"Did you know there's one thing you can do to transform a betrothal contract into an unbreakable marriage contract?" Medea remarked.

Bill straightened rapidly, alerted by the mock-casual mention of betrothal contracts. Why on earth would a… a one-night-stand mention something like that? In the morning after, no less?

"It's like a safety clause, to make sure the younger betrothed doesn't get abused too badly."

Bill saw through it, six hours too late – it was a trap and he had let himself be led like a pig to slaughter. His voice broke as he stared into a pair of cold blue eyes. "H-harry?"

The veela look-alike smirked. "That didn't take you long, sir," she replied, retaining the appearance. There were several Dark potions capable of granting someone the appearance of someone else; Bill should have listened when Snape had warned him about Harry's propensity for the Dark. The she-Harry stretched – perversely taunting Bill with _her_ nakedness – and raised her eyebrows. "Care to have a guess at the clause?"

Bill, with his tongue glued to the top of his mouth and something stuck in his throat, shook his head.

Harry tutted mockingly. "You didn't even read it through past making sure it was breakable, did you?" Her smirk widened. Even in the guise of a beautiful woman, _she_ looked ugly with that expression on her face. "You couldn't fuck me."

Bill felt like he was slapped. He knew something bad had happened, something that was going to screw him over royally, but his brain got stuck on the abstract knowledge and couldn't move on to contemplate the particular ramifications.

"You see, sir," Harry continued, laughing. "When you shagged me – and let me remark that I've had better: Syd', for example, liked me a lot – you solidified the contract. You can't get out of it anymore. And I hear you were fixing to marry a little French half-veela… what a pity."

Harry stood from the bed, spelled her clothes on and walked out of the apartment, without so much as a last hateful glare in Bill's direction. Only when the telltale crack of Apparition sounded from the outside, he became able to move again.

Bill raised his hand up to his face and, with surprise, felt a drop of liquid – a tear? Preposterous.

He would have to look for the contract, but he didn't doubt that Harry had researched his revenge well. The boy had always been good at the things he was doing, and especially when those things included getting what he wanted.

It suddenly wasn't so flattering to be the centre of Harry Potter's life, not when the boy – young man – hated him enough to throw away all the possibilities for his life just to make Bill miserable. And they had… they had slept together… Bill still couldn't wrap his mind about it. Was that really Harry? The little boy with an Uncle-inflicted bruise on his cheek? The child that had stopped loving Bill because he had feared that the sentiment would make Bill resent him?

Bill had given up on so many people in the past, and it took Harry giving up on him to show him how far he was gone… but he hadn't taken the hint and pressed on further, to such depths of depravity that he had been destined to hell on earth – and he had pulled Harry along. Snape was right. He should have damn well let things be.

Ultimately, William Weasley's life was ruined by a drunken idea of Timothy Masen… and Bill couldn't blind himself enough to believe that it was Masen's fault.

x

The letters from his family became gradually more and more insistent, but Bill ignored them until Charlie threatened to come to Egypt and have words with him. Knowing that his brother was fully capable of it, Bill promptly bought a portkey and arrived in Romania, on the edge of the Preserve.

A Hitwizard descended upon him and in broken English demanded identification. Bill would probably have been detained on basis of his nationality, had Charlie not come out of the wrought iron gates of the reservation and rescued him.

They didn't go in – apparently Charlie didn't want his colleagues to meet Bill any more than Bill wanted his colleagues to meet Charlie – but rather up a slope until they reached a top of a hillock. There was a village in the vale in front of them, with a tall church-tower sticking out of its centre.

Charlie halted at a little muggle shrine with a burnt-out candle inside and sat on the concrete stair.

"Harry came by about two weeks ago," he started without a preamble. "He wanted to know about the betrothal contract."

Bill nodded. He felt cold. Harry, the all-too-clever little beast, had tracked down Charlie, found the details of a practically forgotten contract, used Dark Arts to transform himself into a woman fitting Bill's taste and seduced him. At seventeen, Bill had not been nearly as accomplished as a bastard.

Charlie interpreted Bill's silence as wordless admission. "I dared hope you had just filled his head with nonsense, not actually used the betrothal contract. I told you to use it only as a last resort!"

"And I didn't listen to you," Bill shot back. "Does it surprise you, little brother?"

"I can't believe it…" Charlie shook his head incredulously, "that he would throw away his whole life for revenge…"

As Harry had put it, a long time ago, when the world wasn't as ugly a place as it was now, Charlie was too 'nice' to understand the mentality of someone hopeless.

"Oh, please," Bill scoffed. "He killed two birds with one stone this way. He got his revenge on me, and he made sure I couldn't dump him."

"But he hates you…" Charlie argued, as if that was of any importance. Bill had honestly expected to be interrogated on why he hadn't come to Burrow, why he hadn't attended his brothers' memorials, why he hadn't let anyone know that he was alive – what did it say about Charlie when he cared more about a stranger's feelings?

"Everybody he knows he hates," Bill said, thinking back to the time when it wasn't so. He still saw Harry as a little boy and could not (never would be able to) believe them married. "He's got no one in the world, Charlie, _no one_. Exactly why does what he did come as a surprise?"

"Merlin…" Charlie sighed, plucking a straw and putting it between his teeth. "You taught him to be just like you."

"You told me, once, that taking him with me would make me a good man," Bill mocked.

"And I was wrong. Instead it made him a bad one."

"Nothing good came of it. Two lives were fucked up." And in that Bill had not counted Haidar, Dumbledore, Snape or Fleur – though, truth to be told, Fleur could have ten new marriage offers before the day was out. How was Bill supposed to break an unbreakable bond? Why on earth had he accepted his brother's harebrained idea about a betrothal? "I hate you, Charlie."

"I'm sorry," Charlie said, sounding almost sympathetic.

"I believe you," Bill replied coldly, "but that just doesn't cut it. And I know it was my decision in the end, and that you're in no way responsible, and guess what: that makes me hate you more."

"Go away, Bill," Charlie said, threw the straw he had been gnawing on to the ground and stood. He was still smaller than Bill, but he had put on muscle that was intimidating in its own right – and, most importantly, he had matured, perhaps even more than Percival. "Go away and don't come back here. I don't want you as my brother. You're not welcome here."

"I figured," Bill replied, fingering his portkey.

But he hadn't, and it still hurt a bit – it hurt that part of him that had once upon a time accepted Charlie as someone he could confide in. That confidence was not broken but the young William Weasley had been; what remained of him – this tragic caricature of a man, chained to a psychotic Saviour of the wizarding world bent on vengeance – had lost any sense of belonging.

x

After a weekend spent with his fiancée in Nice, Bill returned back to the apartment in the _niwt_, which he still subconsciously regarded as home. It was always quiet and dark these years, and he never stumbled over anyone else's things anymore. His books remained in the chest where he had put them and his wards-

His wards had been disturbed.

Bill knew who it had been, of course, and was surprised when his predominant feeling wasn't anger or spite, but fear.

He entered quietly. A lantern was lit, the one above the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom, and Bill's bed had an occupant who seemed to be asleep, subconsciously hugging Bill's folded blanket to his chest. A pair of heavy combat boots stood sadly stooping at the foot of the bed, and two wands – Harry's familiar one and another, slightly longer, made of some kind of black wood – lay on the bedside table.

"If you came to apologise, spare yourself the effort," Bill said coldly, loud enough to wake the boy on the off chance that he truly was sleeping. The lack of transition to wakefulness was proof enough that Bill had been correct in recognising the deception.

"I'd just killed Voldemort, and I found you were gone," Harry muttered, facing the wall. "I figured – and I know I was being stupid, but I just didn't have the energy left to deal with the truth – that you had left 'cause you thought I was dead-"

"I had," Bill cut in before he could stop himself.

Harry continued as if he hadn't heard him. "And then I woke up the next day and I hoped, foolishly, that after the wizarding world heard that Voldemort was dead and their _sodding_ Saviour triumphed again, that you were going… I don't know, come for me or something. Take me away from them. With you." Suddenly Harry sounded so young – like the self-conscious eight-year-old rather than like the fake femme fatale. "But you didn't care to have me back. You left me to the vultures."

"That's why you disappeared?" Bill asked and, figuring he might as well make himself comfortable _in his home_, pulled off his shoes.

"I was undesirable, sir." Harry chuckled. It was a sound like a ghoul sneezing. "As always. Unwanted." He wheezed out more sickly chuckles. "In the end I took myself away before they killed me – or locked me up. Again."

"I'm sorry-"

"No, you're not," Harry dismissed Bill's apology. It was to be expected: Bill had spoken it without giving a thought as to whether he truly was sorry. "You came back to Britain the next day. I managed to build myself a castle of air in the half-hour before I found you've asked Delacour to marry you. I've died less when Voldemort zapped me with the Killing Curse."

Bill's throat was tight, and he had to swallow several times before he was able to speak. "And you wanted revenge."

"Revenge had little to do with it." Harry shook his head and turned around, locking his gaze with Bill's. "I wanted satisfaction. Betrayal for betrayal. Broken heart for broken heart."

Had he got any of it? Bill didn't understand this. This was past the borders of rationality and logic, and pragmatism didn't work here. "And now?"

"I don't know," Harry replied and shrugged. Apparently, he didn't care either. "I don't have anything left – to be or to do. In fact, if you want to go back to Delacour, you could kill me. I won't defend myself." With a mirthless quirk of his lips and a hint of challenge, Harry offered: "Free yourself, sir."

Kill Harry? The mere idea was utterly absurd, and Bill was going to prove it.

He reached for his boot and one-handedly extracted his knife. He lifted it and pressed the tip to Harry's skin between two ribs, where he knew it would go straight through the heart. All he had to do was grip the handle a little harder and lean on his hand. Simple. Fast.

He met Harry's eyes. Harry was looking at him dispassionately, resigned, perfectly ready for his death at Bill's hands – and truly believing that he was going to get it. That belief, from _Harry_, from the person who once upon a time understood Bill better than anyone, whom Bill had accepted into his life… whom Bill in the end _wanted_ in his life… It made Bill hate himself.

The emotion came as a shock to him, and he leaned on his right hand, without thinking the action through. Harry's body gave, of course, and the knife sank, cutting through skin and muscle, into the heart.

Harry breathed out and looked away, waiting in silence.

Bill, in shock and oddly suspended from his feelings, cupped Harry's face and forced him to look at him. He tried to think of something to say, something to sooth the hurt he had caused, but he would have needed years for that and he had but seconds.

"I don't hate you," Harry spoke suddenly. "I lied. I'm sorry."

Bill didn't know what to say. He remained silent, and Harry's lips curled in a little sardonic smile, disappointed but unsurprised. He died with that expression on his face.

They were drowning in a lake of blood – Harry's still warm carcass and Bill – and Bill pulled out the knife and seriously considered killing himself. Then he recalled he had a family that had yet to disinherit him and a woman in love with him, ready to marry him. What had Harry had? How would it right his wrongs to lay down his life for nothing?

"I'm sorry, too," he said.

x

A/N2: Merlin… thank you for reading through. I hope you enjoyed the story despite all the darkness and hatred (which also weren't intentional). Let me know.

Brynn


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